Enclosure, Rathgorgin, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
In a field of pastureland beside the Dooyertha River in County Galway, something large is hiding in plain sight, though you would never know it walking the ground.
The only way to see it is from above, where the grass gives it away.
A cropmark is the faint but legible signature that buried or long-vanished structures leave on the landscape. When earthworks are ploughed flat or simply decay over centuries, the soil above them retains a different moisture and nutrient content from the surrounding ground, and growing crops or grasses respond accordingly, producing subtle variations in colour and density that become readable from altitude. In this case, satellite imagery captured in March 2011 revealed the outline of a possible enclosure on the north bank of the Dooyertha River, roughly 114 metres along its north-east to south-west axis and approximately 108 metres north-west to south-east. That makes it a substantial feature, comparable in scale to the larger class of ancient enclosures found across Ireland, which could variously have served as ringforts, ceremonial spaces, or early settlement boundaries. The cropmark was identified and reported by Jean-Charles Caillère, whose observation brought a feature of this size to attention that had otherwise left no trace above the turf.
No excavation or further survey detail is available for this site, so its date, function, and character remain open questions. What the satellite image offers is a shape, and the shape is considerable.