Enclosure, Gearagh, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Enclosures
In the fields of Gearagh in north County Cork, a pair of concentric rings lies buried beneath the soil, invisible to anyone walking the ground but legible from the air as a ghostly double circle pressed into the landscape.
The site is known only through a cropmark, that phenomenon where buried ditches and walls influence the growth of crops or grass above them, producing colour or height differences that become apparent in aerial photography but leave no visible trace at ground level.
The cropmark, recorded from an aerial photograph taken in July 1989, describes a penannular form, meaning the rings are nearly but not quite complete, open at the north-east. Two concentric fosses, or ditches, define the enclosure, which measures roughly 45 metres in diameter. The outer ditch appears to have been cut or disturbed at its northern end. What function the original enclosure served is not stated in the available record, though concentric-ditched enclosures in Ireland range from prehistoric ceremonial sites to early medieval ringforts, the latter being the most common type of rural settlement in Ireland between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. The site does not stand alone in the area: a possible second enclosure sits immediately to the east, and another lies approximately 50 metres to the south-south-east, suggesting this part of Gearagh may have once supported a cluster of enclosed activity, though the relationship between them remains unexamined.