Embanked enclosure, Coolhull, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Ringforts

Embanked enclosure, Coolhull, Co. Wexford

In a shallow valley near Coolhull in County Wexford, a low earthen bank traces most of a D-shape through scrub vegetation, then simply stops where a small stream has cut the perimeter away.

No entrance survives. No fosse, the external ditch that typically rings an enclosure of this kind, is visible. What remains is a roughly 35-metre arc of earthwork, modest in height, quiet in character, and somewhat resistant to easy interpretation.

The bank itself is four metres wide, rising between 30 and 80 centimetres depending on whether you measure from the inside or the outside. That asymmetry is not unusual in earthen enclosures, where spoil was often piled to create a more pronounced face on one side. The stream running to the south-west, oriented roughly north-north-west to south-south-east, has done what streams tend to do over centuries: it has quietly erased the western portion of whatever boundary was originally complete. Whether this enclosure once served a domestic purpose, a ceremonial one, or something more agricultural is not recorded. Embanked enclosures of this general type appear across Ireland and are notoriously difficult to date without excavation, which has not taken place here.

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Pete F
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