Enclosure, Donore, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Donore, Co. Kildare

Somewhere beneath the farmland at Donore in County Kildare, a circular enclosure roughly 53 metres across lies completely invisible at ground level, betrayed only by the way crops grow above it. Cropmarks of this kind appear when buried features, such as the filled-in ditches or earthworks of an ancient enclosure, cause the vegetation above them to grow at a slightly different rate or colour to the surrounding field. From the air, and particularly on aerial photography taken during dry summers when the contrast is sharpest, these ghostly outlines can resolve into legible shapes that would otherwise go entirely undetected.

The enclosure at Donore came to notice through Google Earth imagery captured on 28 June 2018, and was recorded by Caimin O'Brien on the basis of details provided by Jean-Charles Caillère. The roughly circular outline sits within what appears to be a radiating field system, also visible as cropmarks, suggesting the enclosure was once the focal point of an organised agricultural or settlement landscape. A possible entrance gap is discernible at the north-west, and fainter cropmarks hint at internal features within the enclosure itself. Circular enclosures of this general type are common across Ireland and often represent the buried remains of ringforts, the farmsteads and defended homesteads that once dotted the Irish countryside, predominantly during the early medieval period. Whether this example fits that category, or belongs to an earlier or later phase of activity, cannot be determined from surface evidence alone.

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Pete F
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