Embanked enclosure, Rathnageeragh, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Ringforts

Embanked enclosure, Rathnageeragh, Co. Wexford

On a gentle slope in Rathnageeragh, County Wexford, there is an oval depression in the ground that nobody can quite explain.

It measures roughly 47 metres from west-northwest to east-southeast and 33 metres across, grass-covered and edged with scrub, shaped like a shallow dish scooped into the hillside. A scarp, essentially a steep earthen face, defines its perimeter, rising from about 0.7 metres on the northwest side to 1.6 metres on the southeast. Outside that scarp runs a fosse, a defensive ditch, best preserved along the northeastern to southwestern arc, several metres wide at the top and dropping as much as a metre deep. What makes the site particularly puzzling is that there is no visible entrance anywhere along its circuit.

The structure has been tentatively identified as a possible ringwork, a class of medieval fortification distinct from the more familiar raised ringfort. Where ringforts are typically Iron Age or early medieval in origin and enclosed by a bank built up from excavated material, ringworks are generally associated with the period of Anglo-Norman expansion into Ireland during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They tend to be defined by a cut or scarped edge rather than a prominently raised rampart, and were often the first defensive form thrown up quickly on newly claimed land. The classification here is cautious, recorded by T. B. Barry in 1987, and the site has not been definitively dated or excavated. Its dished interior, the surviving fosse, and the sloping ground it occupies are consistent with that reading, but the absence of any clear entrance keeps the question open.

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Pete F
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