Embanked enclosure, Ballinphuill, Co. Roscommon

Co. Roscommon |

Ringforts

Embanked enclosure, Ballinphuill, Co. Roscommon

In a low-lying part of County Roscommon, a slight rise in the ground holds something that most people would walk across without a second thought.

The grass and rush-covered surface conceals a circular earthwork roughly 52 metres in diameter, defined by three concentric earthen banks separated by ditches, known as fosses. The banks are low, some barely ankle-height in places, and a modern field wall running north to south bisects the western half of the site, making those portions even harder to read. What you are looking at is not a fortified enclosure in any conventional defensive sense. The working theory is that this was a ceremonial site, a type of monument associated less with habitation or warfare than with ritual use, though precisely what kind remains open.

The monument's structure is methodical in a way that rewards close attention. The innermost bank, between roughly 2.4 and 3.3 metres wide, is separated from a flat-topped middle bank by a fosse that deepens noticeably towards the east, reaching 1.4 metres at its deepest point there compared with only 0.3 metres at the north. The outer bank, the most eroded of the three, has disappeared altogether along the south-south-east to south arc. An entrance cut through all three banks on the eastern side is modernised, with gaps of 3, 5, and 9 metres through inner, central, and outer banks respectively, suggesting the original approach was reworked at some point for agricultural convenience. The maximum external diameter, measured east to west, reaches 84.6 metres when the full circuit is taken into account. Archaeological testing carried out around 2014 by Quinn, at a location approximately 80 metres to the south, produced no material that could be directly connected to the enclosure, leaving its date and precise function unresolved.

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Pete F
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