Enclosure, Lyrath, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Lyrath, Co. Kilkenny

On the grounds of what is now a hotel in County Kilkenny, a small enclosure was recorded on a map in 1839 and then, quietly, erased from the next one.

The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map, produced in the late 1830s as part of a remarkably thorough national cartographic effort, marked a roughly rectangular feature about ten metres from north to south and fifteen metres from east to west, sitting approximately fifty metres south of Lyrath church. By the time the revised edition appeared in 1900, it was gone, at least from the official record.

What the enclosure actually was remains open to question. Small enclosed features of this kind, appearing near ecclesiastical sites in the Irish landscape, are often the remnants of early medieval activity, whether domestic, agricultural, or associated with a nearby church. Their boundaries were typically formed from earthen banks or stone walls, and they could serve any number of purposes, from livestock management to the delineation of a burial ground or a monastic precinct. The proximity to Lyrath church is suggestive, though nothing in the surviving record ties this particular feature to any specific period or function. Its disappearance between the two OS editions may reflect genuine physical loss, the levelling of a low earthwork as the surrounding land was managed or developed, or it may simply reflect a change in what the later surveyors chose to record.

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