Embanked enclosure, Clooncommon More, Co. Roscommon
Co. Roscommon |
Ringforts
On a low drumlin in County Roscommon, there is a circular earthwork with no visible entrance.
Whatever its original purpose, whoever built it left no obvious way in or out, at least none that survives above ground. That small detail, the absence of a gap, a causeway, or any break in the bank, is what makes this enclosure quietly puzzling.
The site sits on a drumlin, one of the smooth, egg-shaped hills of glacial debris that characterise this part of Ireland's midlands. The enclosure itself is roughly circular, measuring 34 metres east to west and 32 metres north to south, defined by a flat-topped earthen bank that is now heavily overgrown with grass and scrub. The bank's base runs to about three and a half to four metres wide, narrowing to around two metres at the top, and it stands noticeably higher on its outer face, up to a metre, than on the interior, where it barely rises above the enclosed ground. Running around the outside, from the east-north-east around through the south to the west-north-west, is a fosse, the term for a ditch dug to reinforce an earthwork's defensive or enclosing function. On the northern and north-eastern sides, the bank has been reduced to little more than a scarp, a worn slope where the original form has degraded. About 90 metres to the south-west lies a rath, the kind of circular earthen enclosure that was commonly used as a farmstead in early medieval Ireland, and the proximity of the two features suggests they may share some relationship, whether of date, function, or the same landholding community.