Hilltop enclosure, Cornaglare, Co. Monaghan

Co. Monaghan |

Enclosures

Hilltop enclosure, Cornaglare, Co. Monaghan

On a hilltop in Cornaglare, County Monaghan, the ground holds the outline of something old and deliberate.

A roughly circular or sub-triangular area, measuring about 73 metres east to west and nearly 72 metres north to south, is defined by an earthen bank that still stands to an external height of 1.8 metres on its south-eastern side, though the interior face has been reduced to barely 0.2 metres above the enclosed ground. What survives is a patchwork construction: stone facing along sections of the eastern and north-western arcs, a scarp along the north-eastern stretch, and hedgerow filling the gaps where more formal boundaries have worn away. Three entrance gaps remain legible at the east, south-east, and south.

Enclosures of this kind, broadly understood as hilltop ringworks or hillfort variants, appear across Ireland in forms ranging from the monumentally engineered to the subtly earthworked. The Cornaglare example sits towards the understated end of that range, yet its dimensions are substantial enough to suggest deliberate territorial or ceremonial intent rather than simple pastoral use. The traces of a fosse, essentially a defensive or drainage ditch, running along the north-western to north-eastern arc reinforce the sense of a deliberately bounded space. Whether the enclosure dates to the Iron Age, early medieval period, or some other era is not recorded, and without excavation the earthworks keep that question open. What is clear from the surviving fabric is that successive generations have folded it into the working landscape, with field banks and hedges absorbing and partially obscuring the original line.

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Pete F
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