Enclosure, Banse Glebe, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Banse Glebe, Co. Kilkenny

In the farmland of Banse Glebe, a D-shaped outline roughly forty metres across has been quietly absorbing the landscape around it for centuries.

The flat eastern side and curved sweep of the enclosure's perimeter, once defined by an earthen bank, now exist largely as a ghost, pressed into the ground by generations of agricultural use. What was once a distinct monument has been levelled, its original form readable today mainly from satellite imagery, where the circular crop or soil mark still traces the enclosure's diameter of approximately forty-two metres.

The enclosure first appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839, recorded as a D-shaped earthwork, and its outline was noted again on the 1900 revision, suggesting the feature was still legible on the ground at that point. Enclosures of this type, broadly circular or sub-circular earthworks defined by a bank and sometimes a ditch, are found widely across Ireland and often date to the early medieval period, though some have earlier origins. Their uses varied; some enclosed farmsteads, others had ceremonial or funerary functions. At Banse Glebe, the straight eastern side gave the enclosure its distinctive D-shape, with dimensions of approximately forty metres along that edge and thirty-four metres across. A field boundary running along the south-western edge has since become a farm roadway, while a further boundary along the north-western edge may preserve a remnant of the original bank, following the enclosure's line closely enough to suggest it was built on top of, or alongside, the earlier earthwork.

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