Enclosure, Carrigduff, Co. Cork

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Carrigduff, Co. Cork

On a west-facing slope at Carrigduff in mid Cork, a large oval earthwork sits quietly in pasture, its outline partly absorbed into the ordinary geometry of field boundaries.

By 1904, the western half of the enclosure had been repurposed as a field fence, its ancient curve pressed into service as a property line. That kind of slow disappearance is common enough, but it makes the survival of the eastern portions all the more worth noting.

The 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded the site as a hachured sub-oval enclosure, measuring roughly 85 metres east to west and 45 metres north to south. Later surveys show the gradual erosion of that plan into the surrounding field pattern. On the ground, the enclosure is defined by an earthen bank standing 1.9 metres high along its north-western to north-north-eastern arc, with further remains of a levelled bank continuing around to the south-east, a low earthen bank from south-east to south-west, and a scarp reaching 2.1 metres on the south-western to north-western side. A fosse, the ditch typically dug outside such an enclosure and here partially infilled, survives to a depth of 0.45 metres along the south-eastern to north-eastern stretch. Enclosures of this type, broadly ringfort-like in character, were commonly used in early medieval Ireland as enclosed farmsteads, though the specific date and function of this one at Carrigduff has not been formally established. What is clear is that the earthwork was substantial enough to be mapped in detail in the nineteenth century and survives in recognisable form today, despite the incremental losses that later decades brought.

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