Enclosure, Ballyloughlin, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballyloughlin, Co. Wicklow

A field in County Wicklow holds three overlapping enclosures that no one walking across it could ever detect.

The ground gives nothing away, no raised bank, no hollow, no visible break in the soil. The only way to know the enclosures are there at all is from the air, where variations in crop growth betray the buried ditches beneath. These faint stains in the earth, known as cropmarks, appear when buried features cause the soil above them to retain or drain moisture differently from the surrounding ground, producing ghostly outlines in growing crops that only become legible when viewed from altitude.

What the aerial photograph reveals is a remarkably layered arrangement. Two enclosures sit side by side: one oval, roughly 40 metres by 35 metres, and one circular, around 25 metres in diameter. A rectangular enclosure, at least 50 metres by 45 metres, has been imposed across them, suggesting activity at more than one period, with later construction cutting through or overlapping whatever came before. Each of the three is defined by a fosse, a term for a ditch dug as a boundary rather than purely for drainage, and the circular enclosure may have a second, outer fosse beyond the first, a concentric arrangement sometimes associated with sites of particular significance or prolonged use. The rectangular enclosure retains a visible entrance gap on its southern side. Further fosses are traceable in the surrounding area, hinting that the buried landscape extends beyond the enclosures themselves.

The site sits on level tillage ground, which is precisely why it survives in this ghostly form. Centuries of ploughing have erased any upstanding earthworks, but the ditches cut deep enough to persist below the plough line, preserving the plan of the place even as its physical presence above ground was gradually worn away.

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