Enclosure, Mountseaton, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Mountseaton, Co. Wexford

On the southern slope of a ridge running between Boley Hill and Carrigroe in County Wexford, a circular feature roughly 28 metres in diameter lies quietly beneath the soil, visible only when the growing season betrays it.

This is a cropmark enclosure, the kind of site that leaves almost no trace at ground level but becomes legible from above when differential soil moisture causes crops to grow at slightly different rates over buried features, outlining a ditch or fosse that once defined the boundary of the enclosure. It sits close to the col, the low saddle of land, between the two summits of the ridge, a position that would have offered both elevation and a degree of natural shelter.

The site was first reported by Jean Charles Caillére, and by 2018 it was faintly detectable on satellite imagery, with clearer definition emerging in enhanced mapping by 2022. The defining feature is a slight fosse, a shallow ditch, that traces the perimeter of the circular area. Circular enclosures of this kind are found across Ireland and range widely in date and function, from prehistoric settlements and ritual spaces to early medieval farmsteads. The Wexford landscape contains numerous such sites at varying stages of preservation and recognition, and this one remains among the less conspicuous, known mainly through remote sensing rather than any physical investigation on the ground.

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