Enclosure, Foulksrath, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Enclosures
At Foulksrath in County Kilkenny, there is an ancient enclosure that exists, for now, only as a ghost in the grass.
No walls survive above ground, no earthworks mark the spot for a passing eye. What remains is a cropmark, the kind of trace that becomes visible only from the air, when differences in soil moisture and depth cause crops to grow at slightly varying rates, revealing the outlines of buried structures below.
The enclosure was recorded on an aerial photograph taken on 14 July 1990. The image shows an irregular rectilinear shape, roughly 16 metres along its north-east to south-west axis and about 9 metres across, with rounded angles rather than sharp corners. Notably, the eastern end appears slightly wider than the rest, giving the plan a subtle trapezoidal quality. Beyond these dimensions and its basic form, the site remains largely uncharacterised. Rectilinear enclosures of this general type can date from the prehistoric period through to the early medieval, and without excavation it is not possible to say what the structure originally was, who built it, or what purpose it served.