Embanked enclosure, Camaross, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Ringforts

Embanked enclosure, Camaross, Co. Wexford

On the southern slope of Camross Hill in County Wexford, there is an ancient enclosure that has effectively vanished from the surface of the earth, at least as far as anyone walking across it would know.

Standing in the pasture where it lies, you would see nothing unusual at all. The earthwork only reveals itself when you look elsewhere, specifically in the cartographic record left behind by the Ordnance Survey in the nineteenth century.

When the OS produced its six-inch map in 1839, the feature was recorded as a subcircular embanked enclosure, meaning a roughly oval area defined by an earthen bank, measuring approximately 45 metres east to west and 40 metres north to south. By the time the revised edition appeared in 1924, the outline had shifted in character, described now as subrectangular and slightly reduced in recorded dimensions, around 40 metres by 35 metres. Whether this reflects genuine change to the earthwork over those intervening decades, a difference in surveying method, or simply two observers interpreting an ambiguous shape differently is difficult to say. What is clear is that the enclosure sits on a gentle shelf partway down the hill's south-facing slope, a position that would have offered modest shelter and a degree of elevation without full exposure to the hilltop. Embanked enclosures of this kind occur across Ireland and are associated with a broad range of periods and uses, from early medieval farmsteads to prehistoric ritual sites, though without excavation it is rarely possible to assign a confident date or function to any individual example.

The enclosure is not visible at ground level in the surrounding pasture, which means the landscape gives nothing away to a casual visitor. Its existence is essentially a matter of record rather than of presence.

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Pete F
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