Earthwork, Liscarroll, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Liscarroll, Co. Cork

Directly alongside the northern curtain wall of Liscarroll Castle in County Cork, a rectangular earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, its boundaries a mixture of a hachured fosse to the east (a fosse being a defensive ditch, typically cut into the ground to form a barrier), a drain to the north, and a field fence to the west.

Measuring roughly 150 metres north to south and 165 metres east to west, it is a substantial enclosure, yet easy to overlook beside one of the largest medieval castles in Ireland.

What makes the earthwork particularly intriguing is the single word recorded against it on the 1937 Ordnance Survey six-inch map: "Hugard". This is a surname long associated with the area, and its appearance as a cartographic label suggests the enclosure was identified, at least in living memory, with a family or landholding of that name rather than with any formalised archaeological category. The earthwork appears in the published Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, Volume 4: North Cork, from the year 2000, where it was recorded in connection with Liscarroll Castle itself. That association is telling. Liscarroll Castle dates to the thirteenth century and is one of the most imposing Anglo-Norman fortifications in Munster, and an enclosure of this size adjoining its northern wall could reflect any number of functions, from a bawn, which is an enclosed yard or outwork associated with a fortified site, to a later field system or demesne feature. The inventory does not resolve the question, and the earthwork carries no confident interpretation.

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