Enclosure (Large), Clonatin, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Enclosures
On a gently sloping field in County Wexford, the ground holds a secret that only reveals itself from the air.
An oval enclosure, roughly 140 metres from east to west and 55 metres from north to south, lies invisible at ground level but appears as a distinct cropmark when viewed on satellite imagery. Cropmarks form when buried features such as ditches or walls affect the growth of whatever crop or grass sits above them, producing subtle variations in colour and height that become legible only from above. This one was first reported by Catherine McLoughlin, who spotted it on Google Earth imagery captured in the summer of 2018.
The site sits on a northwest-facing slope that once formed part of the demesne of Bullockhouse Farm House. A demesne, in the Irish context, typically refers to the home farm or landed estate attached to a house of some standing, and the landscape here still carries traces of that agricultural past. The enclosure itself is defined by a single ditch, and towards its eastern end it is interrupted by a north-northeast to south-southwest field bank, with a second bank extending southeast from it. That second bank formed one side of a lane leading to a farmhouse roughly 160 metres away. Both field banks appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of 1839 and 1902, but the enclosure itself does not, which suggests either that it had already been levelled beyond surface recognition by the nineteenth century, or that it was never substantial enough to catch a surveyor's eye on foot. The enclosure predates those maps, and its single-ditch oval form places it within a broad tradition of enclosed sites found across Ireland, though its precise date and function remain unestablished.