Enclosure, Ballycooleen, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballycooleen, Co. Wicklow

In a field in County Wicklow, somewhere between a modern agricultural complex and the wooded declivity of the Vale of Avoca, a near-perfect circle sits quietly in the farmland.

It is not visible to anyone walking past; you would need to look down from the air to see it at all. On aerial photography, a circular ditch traces a ring roughly 43 metres across, most legible to the north, east, and south-west, fading in and out as the soil conditions shift. There is no identifiable entrance gap, which makes it difficult even to guess at how people moved in or out of whatever once stood here.

Circular enclosures of this kind, defined by a surrounding ditch that would originally have thrown up a bank on the inner or outer edge, are a recurring feature of the Irish countryside across many centuries. They served variously as farmsteads, ceremonial spaces, or enclosures for livestock, and dating them without excavation is rarely straightforward. This particular example sits at around 134 metres above sea level on gently rolling ground, with the land falling away to the west towards the Avoca River about 1.7 kilometres distant, and rising again to the south-east. About two kilometres to the west, on the far side of the Avoca, lie the ruins of a church, its associated graveyard, and a castle at Castleadam, suggesting this corner of Wicklow had a degree of medieval significance. Ballyarthur House lies roughly 2.3 kilometres to the south-west.

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Pete F
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