Enclosure, Dunnstown, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Dunnstown, Co. Kildare

There is nothing to see at Dunnstown, and that, in a way, is precisely the point. Beneath a stretch of level, well-drained pasture in County Kildare, the outlines of six small subrectangular enclosures survive only as cropmarks, the kind of ghostly impressions that become legible solely from the air, when differential growth in the vegetation above buried features betrays what the ground itself conceals. No banks, no ditches, no upstanding remains of any kind were noted on the ground; just grass, heavy and unbroken.

The enclosures, recorded under the reference numbers KD024-050001 to KD024-050006, were identified from an aerial photograph held in the Geological Survey of Ireland series. Cropmarks of this kind form when buried walls, ditches, or pits affect how plants grow above them; soil over a filled ditch retains more moisture, producing lusher growth, while compacted foundations can have the opposite effect. The result, visible in the right season and at sufficient height, is a pattern the landscape otherwise keeps entirely to itself. That six such features appear in close proximity at Dunnstown suggests the area once held a cluster of small enclosed spaces, though without excavation their age, function, and relationship to one another remain open questions.

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