Enclosure, Aughnagalley, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Aughnagalley, Co. Wexford

On a north-facing slope in Aughnagalley, County Wexford, something circular and ancient is pressing up through the soil, though you would never know it by walking the ground.

The site reveals itself only from above, through the subtle language of cropmarks, those faint discolourations in growing vegetation caused by buried features affecting how deeply roots can reach and how much moisture they retain. What shows up, when conditions are right, is the outline of a circular enclosure defined by two concentric fosses, or ditches, with an internal diameter of roughly 25 metres and an external diameter of around 35 metres.

The enclosure came to attention when Simon Dowling first reported it, and the detail visible on aerial imagery captured in July 2018 is striking given how little survives at surface level. Circular enclosures of this type are a common feature of the Irish landscape, ranging from prehistoric ringforts used as defended farmsteads to earlier ceremonial or funerary sites, and the double-fosse arrangement here adds a degree of elaboration that distinguishes it from the most basic examples. Whether the ditches were ever accompanied by an internal bank, a palisade, or some other upstanding element is impossible to say without excavation. What remains is essentially a ghost of a structure, legible only in the right light and season, when differential crop growth traces the outline of something that was once, in some form, deliberately made.

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