Enclosure, Toor More, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Enclosures
On the upland grazing between the Nore and Gloshia Rivers in County Kilkenny, a fairly substantial enclosure once occupied the ground just below a hill crest.
It no longer exists in any visible form. There is nothing to see there now, and that absence is, in its own quiet way, the point.
The enclosure was recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839, which captured Ireland's landscape in extraordinary detail before much of it was altered or lost. At that time, the feature appeared as a sub-rectangular shape with rounded corners, measuring roughly 43 metres north to south and 27 metres east to west. An existing field boundary running north-north-east to south-south-west formed its western side, and it is likely the enclosure extended further in that direction beyond the boundary line. Enclosures of this general type, defined by an earthen bank or similar boundary, were common features of the early Irish landscape, used variously as farmsteads, cattle pounds, or sites with ritual significance. By the time the Ordnance Survey revised its maps in 1947, this one had been levelled entirely, absorbed back into the rough grazing land around it. Whatever purpose it served, and whoever maintained it, went unrecorded before it disappeared.