Enclosure, Ballyragget, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Enclosures
Beneath a field of tillage near Ballyragget in County Kilkenny, there is an enclosure that no one walking the land would ever notice.
It exists, for all practical purposes, only from the air. A single aerial photograph, reference GB90.BM.23, captured a cropmark revealing the outline of a D-shaped enclosure with an entrance oriented to the south. At ground level, nothing whatsoever remains visible.
Cropmarks of this kind form when buried archaeological features, walls, ditches, or banks, influence the growth of crops above them. Soil over a filled-in ditch tends to retain more moisture and produce taller, darker vegetation, while a buried wall does the opposite. From altitude, these subtle differences in growth read as shapes, and in this case the shape is a D, a form associated broadly with early medieval enclosures found widely across Ireland, often surrounding a farmstead or small settlement. The site sits just off the crest of a south-facing slope in undulating terrain, with limited views to the north and east but wide, open sightlines stretching south-west, west, and north-west, a positioning that would have made practical sense for anyone choosing to settle or enclose land here. Whether the enclosure was a simple agricultural boundary, a defended homestead, or something else entirely, the aerial photograph alone cannot say.