What is recorded here

Indicated is a twenty-six-metre circular tree-ring in the grounds of St. Austin’s Abbey, County Carlow, created beside the River Slaney during the mid-nineteenth-century construction of the French Gothic house. The ring did not appear on the earliest 1840 map but emerged on later revisions, suggesting it was planted as a deliberate landscape feature rather than inherited from older fields. It may have marked a private garden, a ceremonial walk, or a boundary for the abbey’s decorative grounds. The house burned around 1921, but the ring remained visible in satellite imagery, preserving a shape that human memory nearly lost.

In the grounds of the former country house called ‘St. Austin’s Abbey’ and c. 75m NW of the River Slaney. A circular enclosure (diam. c. 26m) visible as a cropmark on OS Ortho satellite imagery (viewed 21 February 2022), identified and reported by Ruaidhrí O’Maolagáin. This is not indicated on the 1st (c. 1840) ed. OS 6-inch map but is indicated as a tree-ring on the subsequent revision. It appears to be a designed landscape feature contemporary with St. Austin’s Abbey, a French Gothic style country house built c. 1856 and burnt down c. 1921 (https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/10400328/saint-austins-abbey-house-tullowbeg-tullow-carlow; viewed 21 February 2022). Another roughly triangular tree-ring is also depicted on the 2nd ed. OS 6-inch map c. 60m to the NE and is also visible as a cropmark. See attached: CW008-102----_01 OS Ortho satellite imagery (viewed 21 February 2022) Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 21 February 2022

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