Enclosure, Tinnacarrick, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Enclosures
On an east-facing slope in Tinnacarrick, County Wexford, a ghost of a structure sits just below the threshold of ordinary visibility.
It does not announce itself in stone or earthwork; instead, it appears only as a cropmark, the kind of subtle discolouration in growing vegetation that betrays buried features beneath the soil, readable from the air or, increasingly, from satellite imagery.
What the imagery reveals is a roughly circular area, measuring approximately 50 metres north to south and 45 metres east to west, defined by a slight positive feature that may represent the remnant of a wall or a narrow bank. A gap of around 10 metres on the eastern side could indicate an original entrance. Enclosures of this general type are found across Ireland and range widely in date and function, from prehistoric ringforts used as defended farmsteads to later ecclesiastical or agricultural boundaries. Without excavation, the Tinnacarrick example cannot be firmly assigned to any one category or period. The site was first reported by Jean Charles Caillére, and the cropmark was identified on Google Earth imagery captured in July 2021.
