Enclosure, Skahanagh More, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Enclosures
In the townland of Skahanagh More in County Cork, a large oval enclosure lies largely invisible to anyone walking across it, its presence revealed not by earthworks you can easily read on the ground but by the faint relief captured through lidar, a remote-sensing technology that strips away surface vegetation to expose subtle variations in topography.
The enclosure measures roughly 55 metres north to south and 75 metres east to west, dimensions that place it comfortably in the range of a substantial early medieval ringfort or an enclosed settlement of comparable age, though without excavation its precise date and function remain open questions.
Lidar survey has transformed the discovery of sites like this one across Ireland over the past two decades. By bouncing laser pulses off the ground from low-flying aircraft, the technology builds up a precise elevation model that can show banks, ditches, and platforms that centuries of ploughing or vegetation have rendered all but imperceptible at ground level. The Skahanagh More enclosure was identified from such imagery and brought to wider attention through information supplied by Colm Chambers.
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