Embanked enclosure, Lissahane, Co. Waterford

Co. Waterford |

Ringforts

Embanked enclosure, Lissahane, Co. Waterford

On a small knoll at the top of a north-facing slope in County Waterford, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly in pasture, its banks still largely intact despite centuries of agricultural use. What makes this enclosure at Lissahane worth a second glance is the combination of its retained stone revetment and the absence of a fosse. Most enclosures of this type, often interpreted as settlement or boundary features from early medieval Ireland, are accompanied by a fosse, a surrounding ditch whose upcast material helped form the bank. Here, there is none. The bank stands largely on its own, defined by earth and stone, with dressed revetment stonework surviving on the north-east to south-west arc.

The enclosure is subcircular in plan, measuring 44 metres north to south and 39 metres east to west. Its earthen and stone bank is approximately 2.5 metres wide, with an internal height of around 1.1 metres and a slightly greater external height of 1.3 metres. Where the revetment has not survived, the bank has slumped or eroded to a simple scarp ranging from 0.4 to 1.4 metres in height. The entrance, widened to 5.4 metres, faces the north-east, which is a fairly common orientation for enclosures of this kind. The interior is partly overgrown with scrub, and the northern section has been pressed into service as a dump for field stones cleared from the surrounding pasture, a fate that has befallen many such earthworks across the country. The site is not dated by inscription or excavation; its form places it in a broad category of embanked enclosures found throughout Ireland, though its precise origins and function remain unrecorded.

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