Enclosure, Kelsha, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Kelsha, Co. Wicklow

In the Wicklow landscape at Kelsha, a small rectangular enclosure measuring roughly 30 by 25 metres sits on a gentle south-west-facing slope, and yet a visitor standing directly above it would see nothing at all.

The feature is entirely invisible at ground level, one of those traces of human activity that the earth has quietly swallowed while cartographers, at least, took note.

The enclosure was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1838, one of the most detailed and systematic mapping exercises ever carried out in Ireland, which captured field boundaries, ruins, and earthworks that were already fading even then. Rectangular enclosures of this kind are a relatively common class of early settlement feature in Ireland, often associated with early medieval farmsteads or small defended farmyards, though without excavation it is rarely possible to say with certainty what any individual example was used for or when it was built. The fact that this one had already disappeared from the visible landscape by the time it was recorded suggests it had been out of use for a considerable period before the surveyors passed through.

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Pete F
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