Embanked enclosure, Cordrumman, Co. Roscommon

Co. Roscommon |

Ringforts

Embanked enclosure, Cordrumman, Co. Roscommon

On the crest of a north-facing slope in Cordrumman, County Roscommon, there is a circular earthwork roughly thirty metres across that has no visible entrance.

Whatever it was built for, whoever once used it, they left no obvious way in or out, at least none that survives in the landscape today. That detail alone sets it apart from the more familiar ringforts scattered across the Irish countryside.

The enclosure is defined by an overgrown earthen bank, between 4.8 and 5.6 metres wide, which runs along the eastern, southern, and north-western arcs. Where the bank gives way, a scarp, essentially a steep natural or cut slope in the ground, takes over, rising to between 1.4 and 1.75 metres. Around the south-western and south-eastern portions, an outer fosse accompanies the bank; a fosse is a defensive ditch, and here it measures roughly 2.6 to 2.9 metres at its base, varying in depth from a shallow 0.2 metres on the eastern side to a more pronounced 0.9 metres toward the south-west. The interior is grass-covered and the bank itself well overgrown, giving the whole thing the quality of a feature that the land is slowly reabsorbing. The variation in bank height around the circuit, from 0.6 metres at the south-east to 1.2 metres at the south-south-west on the interior face, suggests either deliberate construction choices or centuries of uneven weathering and slippage.

Enclosures of this kind in Ireland are notoriously difficult to date without excavation, and the absence of an entrance makes this one particularly ambiguous. It could represent a ringfort of early medieval date, a form of enclosed farmstead common across the island between roughly the sixth and tenth centuries, or it could belong to an entirely different tradition of enclosure. Without further investigation, it sits quietly at the hilltop, its purpose unresolved.

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Pete F
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