Enclosure, Carriganass, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Enclosures
On a west-facing slope above the glen of the Tourig river in County Cork, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly in pasture, its enclosing bank so overgrown it could easily be mistaken for a natural rise in the field.
What makes it quietly puzzling is a discrepancy in the historical record: when the Ordnance Survey mapped this area in 1842, they recorded it as a rectangular enclosure. What stands on the ground today is anything but rectangular, which raises the question of whether the shape was always misread, or whether something has changed in the intervening century and a half.
The enclosure measures approximately 17.8 metres north to south, bounded by a bank of stones packed with earth. Internally, the bank stands around 0.9 metres high; externally, only about 0.5 metres is visible above the surrounding ground. The interior sits lower than the adjacent field on most sides, a feature sometimes associated with long agricultural use or deliberate construction. To the west, the original bank has been replaced by an ordinary field fence, erasing part of whatever boundary once existed there. About 150 metres to the east lies a separate site classified as a possible ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead common across early medieval Ireland, typically defined by one or more earthen banks surrounding a domestic area. Whether the two sites are related is not recorded, but their proximity on the same slope above the Tourig glen is notable enough to give pause.