Enclosure

The National Monuments Service's description

Cropmark of W half of subcircular enclosure visible on aerial photographs (CUCAP, BGN 80). No visible surface remains.
Monitoring of topsoil-stripping (Nat. Grid Ref. 23814 17522) was undertaken on the site of a proposed dwelling-house at Toberboe, Co. Laois, on 5 June 2001, under licence no. 01E0472. The site is in the immediate vicinity of an enclosure site (LA035-033), described in the Archaeological inventory of County Laois (Sweetman et al. 1995) as a 'cropmark of the western half of subcircular enclosure'. The monitored areas comprised the house site, access road and percolation area. The house site is located on gently rising ground at the south-west edge of a natural ridge, which traverses the development site from east to west. Monitoring revealed that the ridge consists of an outcrop of grey/white silty sand and gravel. It rises to the north-east of the house site and the sand/gravel outcrop appeared just on the field surface in the north-east corner of the stripped area. No trace of an enclosure feature was discovered during monitoring. It is possible that the sand and gravel outcrop is related to the cropmark site but the extent of the stripped area was insufficient to verify or refute this suggestion (Bennett 2003, 224).

Archaeological testing in the vicinity of the monument was carried out by Dominic Delany in 2002 under excavation licence no. 02E1686.

The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Laois' (Dublin Stationery Office, 1995) compiled by P. David Sweetman, Olive Alcock and Bernie Moran. In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research.

Date of upload: 17 December 2007