Enclosure (Large), Kilmurry, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Enclosures

Enclosure (Large), Kilmurry, Co. Kildare

At a point in County Kildare where the Sweep River and the Fear English River draw close to one another, a large circular enclosure lies almost entirely invisible to anyone walking the ground. The earthwork, roughly 130 metres across from north to south, does not announce itself with dramatic ramparts or obvious stonework. Instead, it survives as a low scarp along its western side and a narrow fosse, the kind of shallow defensive or boundary ditch commonly associated with early historic enclosures, tracing its northern, north-eastern, south-eastern, and southern arcs. Pasture has reclaimed it, and only aerial and remote-sensing technologies have drawn it back into legibility.

The site occupies the broader, south-western end of a triangular spur of level ground, a natural promontory of sorts formed by the converging rivers. It was first reported by Jean-Charles Caillere, and aerial imagery captured in March 2017 confirmed the enclosure's outline. LiDAR imaging, which uses laser pulses to detect subtle variations in ground surface that the eye or a standard photograph would miss, revealed further complexity within: a possible oval enclosed area in the western sector, and what appears to be a rectilinear subdivision in the eastern sector, suggesting the interior was not a single undifferentiated space. Relict cultivation ridges, the low parallel mounds left by pre-modern ridge-and-furrow farming, run north-west to south-east across both the site itself and the surrounding fields, indicating that agricultural activity at some later point overlaid, and partially obscured, whatever the enclosure once contained. Possible field drains, some perhaps later interventions, complicate the picture further.

What the enclosure was originally built for remains an open question. Large circular enclosures of this scale in Ireland are often associated with early medieval ringfort settlements or ceremonial use, though without excavation the function and date of this particular example cannot be confirmed. For now it remains a feature best appreciated at a remove, its geometry emerging more clearly from the air than from the ground beneath your feet.

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Pete F
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