Enclosure, Comeraghhouse, Co. Waterford
Co. Waterford |
Enclosures
A circular earthwork roughly 43 metres across sits on a gentle east-facing slope near Comeraghhouse in County Waterford, and what makes it quietly odd is what it lacks. There is no visible entrance, no original fosse (the defensive ditch that typically rings such enclosures on the outside), and no obvious explanation for how people were meant to get in or out. A roadway now cuts across it on a northwest-to-southeast line, bisecting the bank as casually as if the earthwork were simply inconvenient, and deciduous trees and scrub have colonised the interior, softening whatever original shape the ground once held.
The enclosure is defined by an earthen bank about 2.5 metres wide, rising around 0.6 metres on the interior side and a metre on the exterior, with stone-revetting visible on the outer face. This kind of revetment, where stones are set against an earthen bank to stabilise and reinforce it, suggests a degree of deliberate construction rather than a purely agricultural boundary thrown up in haste. The site was already being recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of 1840 and 1926, where it appeared as a circular wooded enclosure bisected by an east-west lane, meaning the roadway cutting through it is not a recent intrusion but one of long standing. Circular enclosures of this kind in Ireland range widely in date and purpose, from early medieval ringforts used as farmsteads and defended homesteads, to later features of more uncertain function, and without excavation it is difficult to say with confidence which category this one belongs to. The missing fosse and the absence of any traceable entrance only deepen that uncertainty.