Enclosure, Tornant, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Tornant, Co. Wicklow

On the eastern edge of a ridge at Tornant in County Wicklow, a circular earthwork sits on a deliberately constructed platform, raised between half a metre and two metres above the surrounding slope.

The enclosure is fifteen metres across and defined by a low bank of earth and stone, roughly a metre and a half wide. What makes it quietly puzzling is what it lacks: there is no identifiable entrance, and no visible trace of any internal structure. Whatever took place within this ring, the ground has kept its secret.

Enclosures of this kind, broadly understood as defined spaces bounded by a bank or wall, appear throughout Ireland and date to various periods, from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval. Their purposes range from settlement and stock management to ritual or ceremonial use, and without excavation it is rarely possible to say which function applied. At Tornant, the artificial platform on which the enclosure sits suggests deliberate effort in its construction, not simply the adaptation of a natural feature. A scatter of broken boulders at the north-eastern arc of the bank may be the remnant of a revetment, a facing of stone used to stabilise or retain an earthen structure, though these have been displaced over time. A second enclosure lies close by to the east, and the proximity of the two raises the possibility that the site formed part of a wider arrangement of activity in this part of the Wicklow landscape, rather than standing in isolation.

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Pete F
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