Enclosure, Whiteswall, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Enclosures
On a slight natural hillock in the rolling grassland around Whiteswall in County Kilkenny, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, doing very little to announce itself.
It measures about thirty metres across, defined by an earth and stone bank that rises to around ninety centimetres on the interior face and a metre and a half on the outside, with a width of approximately two metres and a notably high stone content throughout. No outer fosse, the term for the defensive ditch that typically accompanies such enclosures, is visible at ground level, though this absence is likely explained by land reclamation work in the surrounding field, which would have gradually infilled any depression over the years.
What makes this particular enclosure quietly peculiar is its interior topography. Rather than a simple flat space enclosed by the bank, the ground inside sits on two distinct levels. The northern side offers only a narrow flat shelf, two to three metres wide, before the land rises steeply by roughly three metres to reach the broader, flat southern half. The hillock on which the enclosure sits, in other words, has not been levelled or regularised; whoever built the bank chose to work with the natural contours rather than against them. The result is an interior space that feels almost tiered, with commanding views outward in every direction from the elevated southern portion.