Embanked enclosure, Killanure, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Ringforts
On the lower northern slope of Black Rock Mountain in County Wexford, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly in the grass, its original entrance lost to time.
The enclosure measures some 46 metres north to south and 44 metres east to west, making it a substantial feature on the landscape, yet it has been quietly bisected by a later field bank and townland boundary running east to west, leaving the southern arc altered into five straight sections of earthen bank rather than the smooth curve that once defined it. At the centre sits a low cairn, roughly ten metres across, whose purpose is not recorded. The whole thing is grassed over now, its origins unannounced.
What survives north of that dividing field bank is more legible as a rath, the Irish term for a circular earthen enclosure typically associated with early medieval settlement, often the enclosed farmstead of a family of some local standing. The bank here is between one and a half and two and a half metres wide and still stands about a metre in external height along the western, northern, and eastern arcs, with traces of stone cladding visible on both its inner and outer faces at the west-northwest and northeast to east sections. Beyond the bank runs an external fosse, a defensive ditch roughly three and a half metres wide and a metre deep, with a further outer field bank to the west and north. The site overlooks the River Clody, which runs west to east about 500 metres to the north and some 80 metres below, a position that would have offered both a commanding view and ready access to water without exposing the enclosure to flooding.