Enclosure, Ring, Co. Dublin

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Ring, Co. Dublin

In a ploughed field in County Dublin, an ancient enclosure survives in a form visible only from above.

No earthwork remains at ground level; what reveals the site is a cropmark, the faint but legible signature left in growing grain when buried ditches alter the moisture and nutrients available to plant roots. On the right aerial image, taken at the right time of year, the outline of a sub-rectangular enclosure emerges with surprising clarity against the surrounding field.

The site sits roughly 700 metres north of the Bog of the Ring and lies close to a second enclosure recorded nearby. Its dimensions are notably uneven: approximately 68 metres along its longer NNW-SSE axis and around 40 metres across the shorter ENE-WSW span, suggesting a shape that falls somewhere between a circle and a rectangle, a form not uncommon in Irish enclosures from the early medieval period. A ditch some two metres wide defines the perimeter, and there appears to be an entrance gap on the eastern side. What makes the site particularly interesting is a secondary feature: the arc of a shallow, north-facing curvilinear ditch running inside the enclosure near its centre, possibly indicating an earlier phase of use or an inner subdivision of the space. A modern field boundary, now levelled, once cut directly across the site along a NNW-SSE line, further complicating any surface reading of the remains. The record was compiled by Tom Condit and uploaded in April 2021.

Because the site exists only as a cropmark, there is nothing to see at ground level on a visit. The most productive approach is to study the Apple Maps satellite imagery from June 2018, where the enclosure is reported to show most clearly, before travelling out. The surrounding land is arable farmland, so access would require the landowner's permission. For anyone with an interest in landscape archaeology, the exercise of reading the aerial image against the open field is itself instructive, a reminder of how much of Ireland's ancient settlement pattern remains present but invisible, just beneath the soil.

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Pete F
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