Enclosure, Springhill, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
Enclosures
There is a field at Springhill in County Dublin that looks, to the naked eye, like any other.
The old boundaries that once divided it have long since been removed, leaving a broad, open expanse on a gentle east-west rise. Yet beneath that unremarkable surface, a geophysical survey has revealed something considerably older: a sub-circular ditched enclosure, the kind of roughly circular earthwork, defined by one or more surrounding ditches, that was used across Ireland for settlement and enclosure from prehistory through the early medieval period. It does not announce itself. It simply sits there, invisible to the casual observer, with wide views north toward higher ground and south to the Dublin Mountains.
The site came to light not through deliberate archaeological investigation but as a consequence of a proposed road realignment. A geophysical survey, carried out under licence number 08R0326, detected a fragmented curvilinear response roughly 38 metres in diameter, interpreted as the inner ditch of a sub-circular enclosure. Inside that boundary, the survey picked up evidence of pits, postholes, ditches, and gullies, suggesting a history of sustained activity rather than a single episode of use. A probable entrance faces south, opening into what appears to be an annexe, an additional enclosed area attached to the main structure, where the geophysical readings suggest burning or burnt material. A fainter outer ditch was also identified, and although the responses were weak, it appears to measure approximately 57 metres east to west and 69 metres north to south, giving a sense of a more complex, layered site than the inner enclosure alone would suggest. Running just to the east of the enclosure is an ancient road, recorded separately in the Sites and Monuments Record. Harrison's 2008 report remains the primary source for the survey findings.
The enclosure is visible as a cropmark on aerial imagery, the kind of faint discolouration in growing crops or parched grass that, viewed from above, traces the outline of buried features below. It is most legible from aerial photographs taken in dry summer conditions, when the soil above filled ditches retains moisture differently from the surrounding ground. At field level there is little to see, but the landscape context is worth noting: the slight rise on which the enclosure sits would have offered genuine strategic value, with long sightlines in multiple directions and an ancient road nearby.
