Enclosure, Ardscull, Co. Kildare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Ardscull, Co. Kildare

Somewhere beneath the pasture at Ardscull in County Kildare, a circular enclosure roughly thirty metres across lies almost entirely out of sight. There is no visible earthwork, no obvious indication from ground level that anything is there at all. What gives the site away is a cropmark, the kind of faint discolouration that appears in aerial photographs when buried features alter how plants grow above them. In this case, the mark outlines a back-filled fosse, a ditch that was once dug to define and enclose a circular area and was later deliberately or gradually filled in, leaving the soil above it subtly different from its surroundings.

The enclosure came to notice through aerial imagery rather than excavation, which means most of what can be said about it is tentative. Its circular form is consistent with a class of enclosed settlement common across Ireland from the prehistoric period through the early medieval, though without investigation it is impossible to assign it confidently to any particular era. What makes the site slightly more complex is a second cropmark visible to the west, tracing a larger and more irregular shape that abuts the main enclosure. This secondary feature may represent an annexe, a partitioned external area sometimes attached to enclosed sites and used for agricultural or domestic purposes. The pairing of a circular enclosure with an adjoining annexe is a recognised pattern in Irish archaeology, and the irregularity of the outer feature here is not unusual for that type of addition.

Both features remain unexcavated and lie beneath ordinary farmland, their full extent and date unknown.

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Pete F
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