Enclosure, Saundersgrove Hill, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Enclosures
On a south-west-facing slope in a quiet stream valley near Saundersgrove Hill in County Wicklow, there is an archaeological enclosure that no longer announces itself to anyone walking across it.
Roughly 35 metres in diameter, it sits at ground level as an absence of evidence, its boundaries invisible underfoot, its shape surviving only on paper.
What we know of it comes largely from the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1838, one of the most detailed cartographic undertakings ever carried out in Ireland, which recorded the enclosure's circular outline at a time when it was presumably still legible in the landscape. Circular enclosures of this kind are a broad category in Irish archaeology, ranging from prehistoric ring ditches to early medieval ringforts, which were enclosed farmsteads typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch. Without excavation it is difficult to say which tradition this particular site belongs to, but its position on a gentle valley slope, close to a watercourse, is consistent with patterns of early rural settlement found across Leinster. In the intervening century and a half since the OS surveyors passed through, whatever earthwork or surface trace once defined it has been levelled or eroded to the point of invisibility.