Enclosure, Colbinstown, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Colbinstown, Co. Kildare

Near Colbinstown in County Kildare, a near-perfect circle lies buried beneath a farmer's field, invisible to anyone walking the ground but clearly legible from the air. The site exists, as far as current knowledge goes, only as a cropmark, a phenomenon where buried ditches or banks cause the vegetation above them to grow differently, producing patterns that show up in aerial photographs as ghostly outlines. In this case, the circle measures approximately 22 metres in diameter, enough to suggest a substantial enclosure of some kind, though its age and purpose have not yet been formally established.

The enclosure came to light through aerial imagery captured on 28 June 2018, when conditions were dry enough for the cropmark to register clearly on Google Earth photography. Circular enclosures of this general type are well known across the Irish midlands and can represent a range of different things: early medieval ringforts, which were enclosed farmsteads typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth century; prehistoric burial enclosures; or other forms of enclosed settlement. Without excavation or further survey, it is not possible to assign Colbinstown's circle to any one category. What the aerial photograph does confirm is that something deliberate was once dug into the ground here, and that the soil still remembers it.

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