Enclosure, Cornaveagh, Co. Roscommon

Co. Roscommon |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Cornaveagh, Co. Roscommon

In a pasture field at Cornaveagh in County Roscommon, a circular enclosure sits quietly on a gentle, south-west-facing slope, largely invisible to anyone walking past.

It was not excavated or surveyed on the ground in any conventional sense; it was spotted from the air. Aerial imagery captured in March 2020 reveals the site as a cropmark, the kind of faint discolouration in vegetation that betrays buried or barely-visible features beneath the surface. The enclosure has an estimated internal diameter of around 35 metres, with traces of a possible fosse, essentially a defensive or boundary ditch, detectable outside the inner scarp, bringing the estimated external diameter to roughly 50 metres.

The site was reported by Jean-Charles Caillere, and what the imagery shows fits a pattern well-known in Irish archaeology: a roughly circular enclosed space defined by a scarp and ditch, consistent with the kind of ringfort or related enclosure that once served as a farmstead or settlement during the early medieval period, though without excavation the precise date and function remain open questions. One detail that complicates the picture is a later field boundary running north-west to south-east across the monument, cutting through it to the south-west of centre. That boundary is clearly a later addition, but its presence means the enclosure has been quietly modified by centuries of agricultural use, its outline absorbed into the working landscape around it.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Enclosure, Cornaveagh, Co. Roscommon. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement