Enclosure, Loughatalia, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Enclosures
Beneath a tilled field near Loughatalia in County Cork, the outline of something very old has been quietly giving itself away, not to walkers or archaeologists with probes and trowels, but to anyone patient enough to study aerial imagery at the right time of year.
A large oval enclosure, roughly 70 metres from north to south and 46 metres from east to west, shows up as a cropmark, the kind of faint, ghostly signature that buried ditches leave in growing crops when drier conditions cause the vegetation above them to ripen or stress at a slightly different rate than the surrounding field. The enclosure itself is invisible at ground level. Only from above does its shape resolve into something deliberate.
Cropmark enclosures of this general form are found across Ireland and often indicate prehistoric or early medieval activity, though without excavation it is impossible to say what this particular example represents. The underlying ditch that defines the oval would once have served as the boundary of some kind of enclosed space, perhaps a settlement, a ritual site, or a stock enclosure. Its scale is considerable. At around 70 metres on its longest axis, it falls comfortably within the size range associated with ringforts and related enclosure types, though the oval rather than circular plan is worth noting as a distinguishing feature. The cropmark was identified from a Google Earth photograph, with the record compiled by Matt Kelleher from details provided by Jean-Charles Caillère, and revised in March 2022.