Enclosure, Ballycallan, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Enclosures
In the pastureland around Ballycallan in County Kilkenny, there is a field that once contained a monument and now contains only grass.
The enclosure no longer exists above ground, which is precisely what makes it worth noting: its disappearance is itself the story.
The site was recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839, and again on the revision carried out between 1899 and 1900, suggesting it was still visible as a landscape feature across at least six decades of mapping. It is on the larger-scale twenty-five-inch OS map that its shape comes through most clearly, depicted as a roughly rectangular enclosure measuring approximately 46 metres along its northeast-southwest axis and around 28 metres across. The northeast side bows outward slightly, giving the plan a subtle irregularity. Enclosures of this kind, low earthen banks defining a bounded space, are common across the Irish countryside and can date from the early medieval period through to later agricultural use, though without excavation it is rarely possible to say which. By May 2021, satellite imagery confirmed that the monument had been levelled entirely, absorbed into the surrounding pasture.