Concentric enclosure, Maidenhall, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Enclosures

Concentric enclosure, Maidenhall, Co. Kilkenny

At Maidenhall in County Kilkenny, there is an archaeological site that no one can visit in any conventional sense, because it exists, at least to modern eyes, only as a pattern in a field.

The site is a concentric enclosure, two roughly circular ditched or banked rings one inside the other, visible solely as a cropmark picked out on aerial photographs. Cropmarks appear when buried features affect how crops grow above them, with ditches and pits often producing lusher, greener growth, and banks or walls the reverse. The result, seen from the air in the right season and light, is a ghostly outline of something that once stood at ground level.

The inner enclosure measures approximately 45 metres in diameter, while the overall site extends to somewhere between 80 and 90 metres across, leaving a gap of roughly 20 to 25 metres between the two rings. Concentric enclosures of this type are relatively uncommon in the Irish archaeological record and are thought in some cases to represent high-status or ceremonially significant settlements, though without excavation it is difficult to say more about the function or date of this particular example. What adds a further layer of interest is the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of around 1840, which marks three small ponds, each roughly 15 to 20 metres in diameter, sitting immediately to the east and west of the enclosure. A field boundary running roughly east-northeast to west-southwest passes through the northern portion of the monument, and the cropmark itself does not appear north of this boundary line, suggesting that later agricultural activity may have obscured or damaged that section of the site. The aerial photographs that brought the enclosure to attention were taken on 2 August 1996.

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