Enclosure, Foylatalure, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Foylatalure, Co. Kilkenny

In a rough pasture in Foylatalure, Co. Kilkenny, an oval earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, its outline faded but still legible to anyone who knows to look.

Enclosures of this type, broadly circular or oval earthen banks enclosing a defined area of ground, are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish countryside, often associated with early medieval settlement or farming activity. What makes this one worth pausing over is less any dramatic feature than the slow, patient way it has persisted, first recorded on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1839, noted again on the 1900 revision, and still visible, if only just, in satellite imagery taken in 2020.

The enclosure measures roughly 44 metres along its north-west to south-east axis and about 30 metres across the other way, giving it a noticeably elongated oval shape. A stream runs along its northern edge in a north-east to south-west direction, which may have made this a practical site for whoever first marked it out, water being as useful a boundary as any earthen bank. By the time satellite imagery was examined in 2020, the enclosure appeared much denuded, meaning the banks that once defined it have been substantially worn down, whether by centuries of grazing, agricultural activity, or simple erosion. That it remains traceable at all, after nearly two centuries of cartographic documentation and an unknown number of centuries before that, is quietly remarkable.

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