Enclosure (Large), Cooksborough, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Enclosures
In a field near Cooksborough in County Westmeath, something large and circular is hiding in plain sight, not underground exactly, but not quite visible to anyone standing at ground level either.
The partial outline of an enclosure roughly 130 metres in diameter shows up in aerial imagery, its curve traced faintly across the landscape in the way that buried or long-levelled earthworks tend to reveal themselves from above, through differences in soil moisture, crop growth, or grass colour that only become legible at altitude.
The site came to attention through Google Earth aerial photographs taken in November 2005, when the outline was clear enough to be recorded. An enclosure of this scale would not have been a modest feature in any period. Ringforts, the most common enclosed settlements of early medieval Ireland, typically measure somewhere between 20 and 50 metres across. Something approaching 130 metres in diameter sits in a different category entirely, closer in scale to the larger ceremonial or elite enclosures associated with prehistoric or early historic activity, though without excavation it is impossible to say what period this feature belongs to, or what function it served. The partial nature of the visible outline suggests that part of the enclosure has been lost to centuries of ploughing or other ground disturbance, leaving only an arc rather than a complete circuit.
