Enclosure, Ballyvoddy, Co. Cork

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballyvoddy, Co. Cork

In the pastureland of Ballyvoddy in north Cork, there is an enclosure that no longer exists, at least not in any form that the eye can detect.

The ground gives nothing away; no earthwork, no ridge, no hollow. What remains is a ghost preserved in cartography, a small semicircular outline recorded on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1842, marked with the hachured shading surveyors used to indicate an earthen enclosure rising from the surrounding terrain.

The 1842 map shows a structure roughly semicircular in plan, with a straight side running approximately twenty-five metres on a northeast to southwest axis and a curved portion projecting about ten metres to the southeast, orientated down a south-southeast-facing slope. Enclosures of this general type in Ireland are most commonly associated with early medieval settlement, the period roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, when farming families typically lived within a roughly circular earthen bank and ditch, a form known as a ringfort or rath. The partly straight side here is an unusual detail, suggesting either a modification to suit the local topography or the possibility of a different function altogether. By the time the archaeological inventory caught up with it, the feature had been levelled entirely, likely lost to agricultural improvement at some point in the intervening century and a half.

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Pete F
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