Enclosure, Ballynabrocky, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballynabrocky, Co. Wicklow

On a north-facing slope above the upper Liffey Valley, partially swallowed by blanket bog, sits a small stone enclosure that has been slowly disappearing for centuries.

Only its eastern edge gives any real indication of what it once was, where a cluster of larger boulders and what may be an external stone setting poke through the peat. The rest of the structure, a roughly circular arrangement measuring just under eleven metres north to south and a little over twelve metres east to west, survives as a low, collapsed wall no more than forty centimetres high. It is the kind of feature that reads clearly enough on a site plan but would be easy to walk past without knowing what to look for.

The enclosure sits in mountain grazing land at Ballynabrocky in County Wicklow, a landscape shaped over millennia by a combination of human activity and the gradual accumulation of blanket bog, the dense, wet peat that forms in high-rainfall upland areas and can preserve and conceal structural remains in roughly equal measure. The wall itself, around one and a half metres wide, appears to have been built largely from small boulders, with the larger stones concentrated to the east. What function the enclosure originally served is not recorded; in an upland context like this, such circular stone-walled features can relate to early settlement, agricultural use, or other purposes now difficult to untangle from the ground surface alone. The peat cover makes interpretation harder still, obscuring most of the enclosing element and leaving only fragments visible at the surface.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Enclosure, Ballynabrocky, Co. Wicklow. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 50 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement