Enclosure, Bennetsbridge, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Enclosures
Somewhere beneath a field near Bennetsbridge in County Kildare, the outline of an ancient enclosure survives, invisible at ground level but legible from the air. It belongs to a category of site that only reveals itself under the right conditions, when a dry summer draws moisture unevenly from the soil and the grass above a buried ditch begins to yellow or green at a different rate to the surrounding crop. The result, visible in aerial photographs, is a cropmark, a faint geometric signature pressed into the landscape by whatever once stood or was enclosed here.
What the aerial record shows is a sub-circular enclosure defined by a narrow fosse, the term used for a ditch dug as a boundary or defensive feature around a settlement or structure. The roughly circular form is characteristic of early medieval ringforts, which served as farmsteads and enclosed dwellings across Ireland for several centuries, though without excavation it is impossible to assign a firm date or function to this particular example. The evidence comes from a single aerial photograph, reference GB89.AI.15, which captured the cropmark at a moment when the buried archaeology briefly announced itself through the living crop above it.
