Enclosure, Lismore, Co. Waterford
Co. Waterford |
Enclosures
On a south-facing slope near Lismore, County Waterford, a circular enclosure roughly 35 metres across exists in a form that most people would walk straight past without noticing. It is not visible as an earthwork or a ruin in the conventional sense; its clearest expression comes from aerial photographs, where differences in soil moisture and crop growth betray the buried outline of something circular beneath the fields. This kind of mark, known as a cropmark, forms when buried features such as ditches or walls affect the vegetation above them, producing variations in colour and height that are invisible at ground level but legible from the air.
The enclosure was noted in earlier documentary work as a traceable outline on the ground, referenced by Power in a study of local placenames. Aerial photographs confirmed it as a circular feature, and the site sits on what would have been a reasonably sheltered, well-oriented slope. Circular enclosures of this type are a common feature of the Irish archaeological landscape, often interpreted as the remains of a rath or ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead used from roughly the early medieval period. However, when archaeological testing was carried out in the vicinity by M. Hurley along the Old Kilmeaden road, the section known as the Clearboy road, no material directly related to the enclosure came to light. That absence does not rule anything out; it simply means the site has not yet given up whatever it may contain.