Enclosure, Dragoonhill, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Dragoonhill, Co. Wicklow

On a ridge at Dragoonhill in County Wicklow, a shallow curve of earthwork traces the outline of a settlement that has been quietly dissolving into pasture for centuries.

The enclosure is roughly D-shaped, about thirty metres from north to south and twenty-seven metres east to west, and its defining feature is a low bank that runs from the north-west around to the east-south-east. That bank, still around three to three and a half metres wide in places, stands only about forty centimetres above the surrounding ground on its outer face and thirty centimetres on the inner, which gives some sense of how much the original structure has been worn down over time.

Enclosures of this kind are among the most common, and most quietly ambiguous, monuments in the Irish landscape. They could represent early medieval farmsteads, later stock enclosures, or any number of other uses depending on local context. What survives here includes not only the bank but traces of a fosse, a shallow external ditch, running along the north-west and curving around from the east-north-east to the east. The fosse is modest, roughly three metres wide and only about fifteen centimetres deep at most, but its presence suggests the enclosure was deliberately defended or at least demarcated with some care. An entrance, three metres wide, sits at the east-south-east, facing slightly downslope. The southern edge of the enclosure appears to have been straightened or cut back at some point, likely by a field boundary that has since been removed, meaning the original line there is no longer clear.

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Pete F
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