Enclosure, Curraghlawn, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Enclosures
A road has sliced through this site so cleanly that only half of it survives.
What remains at Curraghlawn, on a gentle south-easterly facing slope in County Wicklow, is roughly half of what was once a circular enclosure, its north-western arc lost at some point to a public road cutting straight through. That kind of truncation is not unusual for early historic sites in Ireland, where modern infrastructure and ancient earthworks have long been in quiet competition, but it does give the surviving portion an oddly exposed quality, like a cross-section through something that was never meant to be opened up.
The enclosure, when complete, would have measured approximately 32 metres in diameter. It is defined by an earthen bank around 1.7 metres wide and a metre high, with an internal facing of drystone masonry that closely resembles the field boundaries in the surrounding landscape, suggesting either continuity of building tradition or later reuse of the same materials and methods. Circular enclosures of this type are broadly associated with early medieval Ireland, where they served variously as the enclosed farmsteads known as raths, as ecclesiastical precincts, or as boundaries for settlement and small-scale agriculture. An external fosse, essentially a shallow ditch, runs around the outside of the bank, measuring roughly 2 metres wide and between 10 and 20 centimetres deep; a gap of about 2 metres at the south-east likely marks the original entrance. Inside the enclosure, two rectangular hollows are cut into the ground: one at the south-east measures 15 metres long by 5 metres wide and reaches a depth of 2 metres, while a smaller hollow at the north-east is 5 metres by 3 metres and roughly a metre deep. Whether these hollows represent the footprints of former structures, storage pits, or later disturbance is not recorded.