Enclosure, Ballingarra, Co. Waterford
Co. Waterford |
Enclosures
On a broad plateau in Ballingarra, County Waterford, a low grass-covered ring sits quietly in the landscape, its purpose unannounced and its age uncertain. What survives is a roughly circular earthen enclosure, about 37 metres across, defined by a broadly spread bank that rises only modestly, no more than 0.6 metres on the outer face and a mere 0.3 metres on the inside. Around parts of the circuit, intermittent traces of an outer fosse remain, a shallow ditch that once reinforced the boundary. A gap in the bank on the north-eastern side, about five and a half metres wide, is thought to be the original entrance.
By the time the Ordnance Survey mapped this part of Waterford in 1840, the enclosure appeared at the centre of five radiating field banks, suggesting it had been absorbed into the working agricultural landscape and was being used, consciously or not, as an organising feature of the surrounding fields. Those field banks have since been removed entirely, leaving the enclosure isolated and easier to read as a single form. Earthen enclosures of this general type, formed by a bank and fosse rather than stone, are found across Ireland and often represent early medieval ringforts or their precursors, though without excavation the date and function of any individual example remains open. Another enclosure lies roughly 110 metres to the west-northwest, hinting that this part of the plateau may once have supported more activity than the present empty fields suggest.