Embanked enclosure, Curraghataggart, Co. Waterford

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Ringforts

Embanked enclosure, Curraghataggart, Co. Waterford

Somewhere in the upland townland of Curraghataggart in County Waterford, a roughly circular ring of earth and stone sits in a valley without any visible way in or out. No entrance gap breaks the bank, no fosse, the defensive ditch that typically accompanies such enclosures, runs around its outer edge. For an enclosure, that absence is quietly baffling.

The structure itself is modest in scale but deliberate in form: an oval earthwork measuring around 30 metres north to south and 28.5 metres east to west, with a bank between 3.5 and 4.5 metres wide. Internally the bank rises only half a metre to a metre above the enclosed ground surface, while externally it stands between 1.2 and 1.5 metres, suggesting the interior was deliberately raised or that material was piled outward rather than scooped from within. It sits towards the head of a west-to-east valley, with a small stream running northwest to southeast just ten metres to the southwest, a detail that hints at practical considerations of water access, whatever the enclosure's original purpose may have been. Embanked enclosures of this general type appear across Ireland in a variety of periods and contexts, sometimes associated with settlement, sometimes with livestock management or ritual use, and often frustratingly ambiguous without excavation to settle the question. The overgrown condition of this example means the bank blends further into the valley landscape, easy to pass without registering what it actually is.

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Pete F
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