Enclosure, Tuckmill Hill, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Tuckmill Hill, Co. Wicklow

On Tuckmill Hill in County Wicklow, sitting at the centre of the much larger Rathcoran Hillfort, there is a circular enclosure roughly fourteen metres across whose existence came to wider attention not through excavation or fieldwork, but through aerial photography.

That detail alone says something about how much of Ireland's ancient landscape remains to be properly examined, spotted only when a satellite passes overhead at the right angle and the shadows fall just so.

Rathcoran Hillfort is itself a substantial prehistoric monument, the kind of large defensive or communal enclosure, typically defined by a series of earthen banks and ditches, that Iron Age communities in Ireland constructed on prominent hilltops. The smaller circular enclosure sits within it, positioned centrally rather than tucked against the perimeter, which sets it apart from the kind of ancillary structure you might expect to find sheltering inside a hillfort's defences. Whether it predates the hillfort, was contemporary with it, or represents a later intrusion into the site is not yet established. At approximately fourteen metres in diameter, it is a modest feature by any measure, but its placement suggests it may have held some particular significance within the wider enclosure rather than being purely functional.

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Pete F
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