Embanked enclosure, Ballyverroge, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Ringforts

Embanked enclosure, Ballyverroge, Co. Wexford

On the north-western slope of Slievecoiltia in County Wexford, a circular patch of scrubland sits on a natural shelf in the hillside, its outline just regular enough to suggest it was not placed there by accident.

Roughly 35 metres across, the area is defined on its north and east sides by a low earthen bank, and on the remaining circuit by a scarp, a natural or artificially cut slope, that rises from about 0.4 metres at the south to 1.6 metres at the west. There is no visible fosse, the defensive ditch typically dug alongside such banks, and no discernible entrance gap has survived. The result is a form that announces itself as an enclosure while keeping its original function quietly out of reach.

This kind of embanked enclosure is a broad category in Irish archaeology, encompassing everything from high-status ringforts to enclosures of uncertain agricultural or ceremonial purpose. What makes the Ballyverroge example quietly interesting is its position and its relationship to a neighbouring site. Roughly 260 metres to the west, but about 50 metres lower on the same hillside, lies a rath, a type of enclosed farmstead typically associated with early medieval occupation in Ireland, dating broadly from the sixth to the twelfth centuries. The two sites share a landscape but not an elevation, and whether they were ever contemporary, or whether one preceded the other by generations, is not recorded. The higher enclosure at Ballyverroge, sitting on its shelf and looking north-west, may have commanded a very different view of the surrounding country than the rath below it, though what use was made of that vantage remains unresolved.

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