Enclosure, Wallslough, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Wallslough, Co. Kilkenny

In the townland of Wallslough, a roughly circular earthwork sits swallowed by trees and scrub, its outline legible on maps but barely so on the ground.

The enclosure measures approximately 45 metres north to south and 42 metres east to west, dimensions that place it squarely within the range of a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement enclosure found across Ireland. Thousands of these survive in various states of preservation, but many, like this one, have been quietly consumed by secondary growth over the decades until the earthwork beneath is more rumour than feature.

The site appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839, which means it was distinct enough at that point to be recorded by the surveyors working their way across the country during one of the most systematic mapping exercises Ireland had seen. It reappears on the 1947 revision, still recognisable as a circular enclosure, and with a triangulation station marked in its north-western sector. Trig stations, the fixed reference points used by surveyors to establish accurate measurements across a landscape, were often placed on elevated or otherwise prominent features, and their presence here suggests the enclosure offered a useful vantage. Between the 1839 survey and the mid-twentieth century revision, the essential shape held; what changed in the decades that followed was the vegetation, which has since obscured whatever earthen banks or ditches once defined the perimeter clearly enough to catch a surveyor's eye.

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Pete F
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