Enclosure, Baunmore, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Baunmore, Co. Kilkenny

On a hilltop in Baunmore, a slightly oval ring of earth and stone sits quietly above the surrounding pasture, looking out across a wide spread of Kilkenny countryside.

It is the kind of place that rewards attention precisely because so little announces itself at first glance. The bank is low, much of it worn down to little more than a scarp, and brambles, nettles, and hawthorns have colonised the interior and perimeter so thoroughly that the overall shape takes a moment to read. Yet the structure is still legible: an enclosure roughly 30 metres across from north to south and 36 metres from east to west, raised above the surrounding ground, with traces of a fosse, a shallow external ditch, still visible at the base of the northern arc.

This is a ringfort, the most common field monument in Ireland, built in their thousands during the early medieval period, broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and typically serving as a defended farmstead for a family of some local standing. At Baunmore, the bank has a notably high stone content, suggesting it was either partly constructed from stone or supplemented by field clearance over the centuries; the loose stone visible near the northern quadrant may reflect both processes at work. A field boundary running roughly north-northeast to south-southwest cuts across the north-western quadrant, and the 25-inch Ordnance Survey map records a possible original entrance in the north-northwest sector, now obscured by that same boundary. The bank elsewhere is largely reduced to scarp and buried under vegetation, with some erosion visible at the north-eastern edge.

The elevated position is worth noting in its own right. The valley running east to west at the base of the hill to the north would have made the site easy to observe from and difficult to approach unseen, and the views south and east are extensive. Whether that commanding position was the primary reason for its placement or simply a fortunate consequence, the site sits where someone once chose to build something meant to last.

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