Enclosure, Mullaghadun, Co. Monaghan
Co. Monaghan |
Enclosures
On a low, north-south ridge in County Monaghan, the faint outline of an ancient enclosure has spent centuries almost entirely unnoticed, sitting at the tip of a gentle spur with nothing to announce its presence at ground level.
The feature is oval or D-shaped in plan, measuring roughly 42 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, and appears to form a slightly raised platform within the surrounding landscape. Enclosures of this kind are broadly associated with early settlement or territorial demarcation, though without excavation their precise date and function remain open questions.
The site was not recorded from fieldwork in the conventional sense. It came to light through LiDAR imagery, a remote-sensing technique that uses laser pulses to produce high-resolution elevation maps capable of revealing earthworks that centuries of agriculture have rendered nearly invisible to the naked eye. Susan Curran was the first to identify the monument from such an image, and it was subsequently noted by Jean Charles Caillére. Cross-referencing with Google Earth imagery from 2008 confirmed the outline, and later aerial photography from 2005 and the 2013 to 2018 period shows it, if faintly. A north-south field bank along the eastern edge has partially cut into the enclosure, suggesting that agricultural reorganisation at some point clipped its original boundary without entirely erasing it.