Enclosure, Hillend, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Enclosures
In a quiet valley in County Kilkenny, there is an enclosure that no longer exists above ground, yet remains faithfully recorded on maps spanning more than sixty years of Irish cartographic history.
The oval earthwork, measuring roughly 31 metres north to south and 22 metres east to west, sat at the junction of a valley floor and its lower slopes, the kind of sheltered, inward-looking spot where views never extended much beyond the surrounding hillsides. At some point between the last map revision and the present day, it was levelled entirely, leaving reclaimed grassland where a defined boundary once stood.
The enclosure first appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839, one of the most ambitious surveying projects ever undertaken in Ireland, which systematically recorded field monuments across the entire country. It was still present on the 1900 revision, and the 25-inch OS map captured its oval outline with enough precision to give us those approximate dimensions. Enclosures of this general type are common across the Irish landscape and are thought to date from a broad range of periods, sometimes associated with early medieval settlement, sometimes with prehistoric activity, though without excavation it is rarely possible to say more than that. What made this one notable is simply its persistence in the documentary record alongside its complete disappearance from the ground.
