Enclosure, Ballintober, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Enclosures
On a gentle east-facing slope in Ballintober, County Wicklow, there is an enclosure that nobody walking the land would ever know was there.
No earthwork rises above the surface, no stones jut from the soil, no depression betrays what lies beneath. The only way this roughly D-shaped enclosure has ever revealed itself is from the air, appearing as a cropmark, the faint differential in how crops grow over buried features where ancient ditches or banks alter the moisture and nutrients in the soil below.
The enclosure measures approximately thirty metres in diameter and was identified through aerial photographs held in the Geological Survey of Ireland's aerial photographic collection. A D-shaped enclosure of this kind is a form found widely across Ireland, often associated with early medieval settlement, though without excavation it is impossible to say with certainty what purpose this particular example served or when it was constructed. It may represent the remains of a ringfort, a class of enclosed farmstead typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries, or it could relate to an earlier or later period of activity entirely. The ground above it has continued to be farmed, ordinary and unremarkable to anyone passing through.