Enclosure, Monagreany, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Monagreany, Co. Wexford

On a gentle north-west-facing slope at Monagreany in County Wexford, a circular enclosure sits essentially invisible to anyone walking the ground.

No earthwork rises above the surface, no ring of stones marks the perimeter. The only way to see it at all is from the sky, and even then only under the right conditions: the feature shows up as a parchmark, the faint discolouration that appears in dry summers when buried features beneath the soil cause overlying grass to scorch unevenly. The circle measures roughly thirty metres across in both directions, defined by a single narrow line tracing its circumference.

Parchmarks like this one are a relatively recent addition to the archaeological record, made possible by the widespread availability of satellite imagery. This particular enclosure was first identified by Simon Dowling, who spotted it on Google Earth in an image captured on 14 July 2018. Circular enclosures of this general kind are common across Ireland and range in date from the prehistoric period through to the early medieval, when they were frequently used as the enclosed farmsteads known as raths or ringforts. Whether this example belongs to that tradition, or to something earlier or later, is impossible to say without further investigation. For now it exists only as a crop-mark geometry suspended between the landscape and the satellite lens, its function and age unrecorded.

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