Ecclesiastical enclosure, Aughmore, Co. Waterford
Co. Waterford |
Ecclesiastical Sites
A field in Aughmore, County Waterford carries a name that has outlasted whatever once stood within it. The locals called it the 'church field', and beneath its grass lies the faint but measurable outline of a large circular earthwork, the kind that in early medieval Ireland typically enclosed a monastery, a hermitage, or a place of worship long since vanished. The enclosure is subcircular in plan, roughly 66 metres across on its longest axis, defined by an earthen bank about two metres wide and a metre and a half high. That bank, modest enough to be easily missed, is the principal surviving trace of what may have been an important early ecclesiastical site.
The enclosure sits near the top of an east-facing slope on an east-west ridge, a position characteristic of early Christian foundations in Ireland, which often favoured elevated ground with clear aspects. By the time the Ordnance Survey recorded the area in 1840, the external diameter of the enclosure measured approximately 90 metres, suggesting the outer limits have since eroded or been absorbed into later field boundaries; indeed, part of the perimeter today follows the townland boundary between Aughmore and a neighbouring townland, a common fate for ancient earthworks pressed into administrative service over centuries. The probable entrance appears to have faced north-east. Aerial photographs have revealed two smaller enclosures as cropmarks, a phenomenon that occurs when buried features affect crop growth differently from the surrounding soil, attached to the west and south-east of the main enclosure, measuring roughly 10 metres and 30 metres in diameter respectively. Whether these represent ancillary structures, burial grounds, or earlier phases of activity is not yet established, but their presence hints at a more complex arrangement than the surface alone suggests.