Enclosure, Barnamire, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Enclosures
At Barnamire in County Wicklow, an aerial photograph reveals something that the ground itself seems reluctant to confirm: the ghost of a circular enclosure, roughly forty metres across, curving across a north-east-facing slope.
Only a rough arc of stones survives, tracing the southern and south-western sector of what may once have been a complete ring. Stand on the hillside and there is, by all accounts, nothing obvious to see at all.
Circular enclosures of this kind are a familiar, if often ambiguous, feature of the Irish landscape. They range from early medieval ringforts, which served as defended farmsteads, to prehistoric enclosures whose purpose is harder to read. At Barnamire, the evidence is thin enough that the site is classified only as a possible enclosure, its form inferred from cropmark or soilmark patterns caught by aerial survey rather than confirmed by excavation or substantial surface remains. The steeper ground rising to the south-west may have made that side of any original structure more vulnerable to collapse or dispersal over time, leaving only the gentler slope to preserve even this fragmentary arc. Without further investigation, the date and function of the enclosure remain open questions.