Concentric enclosure, Baunanattin, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Enclosures

Concentric enclosure, Baunanattin, Co. Kilkenny

Beneath a ploughed field in the townland of Baunanattin, Co. Kilkenny, a double-ringed enclosure has been lying quietly out of sight for what may be centuries.

It exists at the surface only as a cropmark, one of those subtle variations in plant growth that betray buried features when seen from above, and it took satellite imagery to bring it into focus at all.

The site consists of two roughly oval rings, one inside the other. The inner enclosure measures approximately 45 metres north to south and 50 metres east to west; the outer ring extends to around 105 metres by 110 metres, making it a substantial feature by any measure. The whole is curvilinear rather than geometric, which is consistent with the broad tradition of enclosed settlements in early medieval Ireland, though no excavation has confirmed a date or function here. The outer enclosure is not perfectly regular: it kinks inward slightly along its southern arc, a small irregularity that hints at something in the ground, perhaps an older boundary or a feature that influenced whoever laid it out. A townland boundary follows the western edge of the outer ring along a northwest to southeast line, which may itself be a clue that the enclosure shaped the local administrative landscape long after it went out of use. A field boundary cuts across the northern sector. The site was identified and reported by Jean-Charles Caillère, working from both Apple Maps satellite imagery and aerial photography from the Ordnance Survey Ireland orthophoto series of 2004 to 2006. A second enclosure, also visible only as a cropmark, lies roughly 180 metres to the northeast, suggesting this part of Kilkenny may once have supported a more densely settled or organised landscape than its present agricultural character would suggest.

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