Enclosure, Bush, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Bush, Co. Wexford

In a flat corner of south Co. Wexford, a circle roughly thirty-five metres across lies invisible to anyone walking the ground.

No earthwork rises above the surface, no stones mark the boundary; the only evidence is a cropmark, the kind of ghostly outline that appears in aerial photographs when buried features cause the soil above them to retain moisture differently, making crops grow at a slightly different rate and colour. Captured in digital aerial photographs taken in July 2006, the circle is defined by a single faint fosse, a filled-in ditch, tracing its perimeter through otherwise unremarkable farmland.

The setting adds a layer of quiet interest. The site sits on level ground with the original southern shore of South Wexford Harbour lying roughly 650 metres to the north. That coastline has shifted considerably over the centuries through reclamation and natural change, so the enclosure once sat in a landscape with a very different relationship to water and to the tidal activity of the harbour. The circular form is consistent with the kind of enclosed settlement or ceremonial site that occurs widely across Ireland from the prehistoric period through to the early medieval, though the notes do not allow for any firm dating here. What complicates the picture further is that at its northern edge the perimeter of this enclosure either overlies or is overlain by the perimeter of a separate neighbouring enclosure, a relationship that suggests the two features are not contemporary, and that the ground here has seen more than one phase of use, each leaving its faint impression on the soil.

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Pete F
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