Enclosure in Pigeonpark — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Joan, Countess of Gloucester and Hertford lost this Kilkenny land in 1307 after jurors listed a hall, chamber, dairy and dovecote inside the enclosure. The circular earthwork still stands about sixty metres wide, dish-shaped and overgrown, while a larger fort waits twenty metres to the southwest. Maybe the counted buildings occupied the bigger place and the smaller fort marked the gate, but the two circles still turn the field into a room where that much of the manor has not been forgotten.

In tillage. There is another larger enclosure (KK023-058001-) c. 20m to the SW. Orpen (1909, 320-21) provides an extent of lands, ‘of Joan, Countess of Gloucester and Hertford, taken in 1307, the jurors say that there are within the manor of Dunfert “Within the enclosure one hall, one chamber, one dairy, one grange, one bretage beyond the gate, and other wooden houses”. They also mention “a dovecote,” perhaps at the same spot’. He describes this monument as, ‘a smaller circular fort…raised artificially about 10 feet. It is slightly dish-shaped, and is 50 paces in diameter. There is an outer fosse faced with stone (modern?) with water lying in places. I conjecture that this is the bretage of the Extent of 1307, and that the large outer fort, perhaps the original Dun Fearta, was utilized as the enclosure for the buildings mentioned’. A circular enclosure (diam. c. 60m) overgrown with trees and scrub. On the 1947 revision OS 6-inch map a small pond is indicated immediately outside the SW quadrant. Also a field boundary is depicted running around the circumference of the monument at the base of the enclosing bank/scarp. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 18 August 2021

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