Enclosure, Westown, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Westown, Co. Kildare

In a field of level pasture in Co. Kildare, about ninety metres from a small northward-flowing stream, sits an earthwork that is easy to overlook and harder to explain. What makes it unusual is not its size but its shape: where most Irish enclosures are roughly circular or oval, this one is a long, narrow rectangle, just thirty-one metres from north to south and seven metres wide. That is an uncommon proportion, more corridor than compound, and it raises quiet questions about what the space was originally intended to hold or do.

The enclosure is defined by a substantial earthen bank, a raised boundary constructed from piled and compacted earth, and by an outer fosse, which is a ditch dug to reinforce the boundary and, in many cases, to supply the material for the bank beside it. The bank here is not uniform: it runs from 2.6 metres wide on the western side to nearly 5.8 metres on the east, and its height varies similarly, reaching 2.4 metres on the eastern exterior. The fosse shows the same asymmetry, broader and deeper on the northern and eastern sides. A single entrance gap at the southern end, just 1.3 metres wide, is paired with a causeway crossing the fosse outside, the kind of deliberate, narrow access point that suggests the enclosure was meant to control movement rather than simply mark a boundary. The whole site is now overgrown with ivy-clad trees and briar, which both obscures the earthworks and, in a practical sense, helps preserve them from disturbance.

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Pete F
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