Enclosure, Aurora, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Aurora, Co. Wicklow

On an upland slope above the Glencree River in County Wicklow, a roughly D-shaped enclosure sits quietly in the landscape, its low grass-covered bank tracing a boundary that has been there long enough to appear on every edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, each time recorded simply as an irregular field.

That cartographic anonymity is part of what makes it quietly strange: generations of mapmakers noted its outline without necessarily recognising what they were drawing.

The enclosure measures approximately 55 metres on its northeast to southwest axis and 38 metres north to south, with the flat side of the D formed by a straight bank of earth and stone to the south. Within its southwest quadrant, two circular hut sites survive, the kind of rounded stone foundations associated with early settlement in upland Ireland, where communities would have worked marginal ground above the valley floor. From the enclosure's southern side, drystone field walls, constructed without mortar by stacking carefully selected stones, radiate outward to the south-southwest and south, suggesting that the enclosure once sat at the hub of a small organised agricultural system. The Glencree River runs approximately 40 metres to the east, which would have made the location practical as well as elevated.

The two hut sites are visible in aerial imagery, their circular outlines pressed into the turf clearly enough to be read from above even after however many centuries have passed since anyone last sheltered inside them.

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Pete F
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Aurora, Co. Wicklow
53.19352018,-6.28722116

Ref: WI03466

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