Enclosure, Oldtown, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Enclosures
Beneath a field in Oldtown, County Kilkenny, the outline of an ancient enclosure is preserved not in stone or earthwork but in the differential growth of crops above it.
The site exists, at least to modern eyes, as a cropmark, a phenomenon that occurs when buried features such as ditches or walls affect the moisture and nutrient content of the soil above them, causing the vegetation growing at the surface to respond visibly, often most clearly in dry summer conditions when the contrast between stressed and healthy crops becomes pronounced enough to photograph from the air.
This particular enclosure was identified by Simon Dowling using Google Earth Pro, working from satellite imagery captured on 28 June 2018. The cropmark traces a curvilinear shape measuring roughly 40 metres northwest to southeast and 29 metres east-northeast to west-southwest, suggesting a roughly oval or sub-circular form of the kind commonly associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland. What complicates the picture slightly is the enclosure's relationship to a field boundary running roughly east to west, which is itself visible as a cropmark. The enclosure appears to extend northwestward from this boundary, though there are faint indications it may also continue to the south of it, meaning the modern field division and the ancient feature may not align neatly, and the full extent of the buried structure remains uncertain.