Enclosure, Knockanure, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Knockanure, Co. Wexford

On the ground at Knockanure in County Wexford, there is nothing obviously to see.

No earthwork rises from the grass, no stone announces itself, no local signpost points the way. The enclosure here exists, for now at least, only as a cropmark, a faint oval outline that becomes legible solely from the air, captured in a Google Earth image dated 14 July 2018. Cropmarks form when buried features such as ditches or banks affect the growth of crops or grass above them, producing subtle differences in colour and height that satellite imagery can sometimes resolve with remarkable clarity. Without that aerial perspective, the site would remain entirely invisible.

What the image reveals is an oval enclosure roughly 50 metres along its northeast to southwest axis and approximately 38 metres across the other way, defined by a single fosse, that is, a dug ditch, somewhere between two and four metres wide. The perimeter is not perfectly intact; a northeast to southwest field bank clips and slightly truncates part of the circuit, and a short line of bushes running roughly west-northwest to east-southeast sits inside the enclosure near its southwestern edge. These are the ordinary intrusions of agricultural land management across the centuries, and they are mild enough that the overall shape remains legible. The site was first identified and reported by Simon Dowling, one of those quiet contributors to Irish archaeology who scan satellite imagery methodically and flag what they find.

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Pete F
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