Enclosure (Large), Kilnew, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Enclosures

Enclosure (Large), Kilnew, Co. Wexford

On a gently sloping field in Kilnew, County Wexford, there is a large enclosure that no one walking the land would easily recognise.

It leaves no visible mark on the ground, no earthen bank, no upstanding wall. It exists, at least to modern eyes, only as a cropmark, a faint differential in how vegetation grows over buried soil, readable solely from satellite imagery captured on a summer's day in July 2018.

The enclosure is subcircular in shape, measuring roughly 82 metres on its north-west to south-east axis and about 70 metres across. It was defined originally by a single fosse, the term for a ditch dug to demarcate or defend an enclosed area, a feature common to prehistoric and early medieval settlements across Ireland. At those dimensions, the interior would have been substantial, large enough to encompass a significant farmstead or a site of some communal importance, though without excavation the date and function remain unknown. The site sits just south of a farm complex on a slight east-facing slope, and a field bank running roughly north-north-east to south-south-west cuts across the eastern edge of the enclosure, evidence that later agricultural boundaries were laid down without any awareness of, or concern for, what lay beneath. It was first reported by Faith Bailey, who identified it through close reading of aerial imagery.

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