Enclosure, Knockanaffrin, Co. Waterford

Co. Waterford |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Knockanaffrin, Co. Waterford

Near the summit of a steep south-facing slope at Knockanaffrin in County Waterford, a grass-covered earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, bisected by a later field bank that has no interest whatsoever in its antiquity. The platform is subcircular, roughly 25 metres across its longer axis, and defined by a scarp, essentially a cut or step in the ground surface, that rises from around 30 centimetres on the uphill northern side to over a metre at the southern edge where the slope falls away more dramatically. A slight dip in the scarp on the eastern side, about two metres wide, is thought to be the original entrance. There is no visible fosse, meaning no encircling ditch of the kind often associated with ringforts, which makes the site a little harder to read in the field.

Ordnance Survey maps from 1840 recorded the feature with an external diameter of around 40 metres, while the 1925 edition put that figure closer to 35 metres, a discrepancy that may reflect gradual erosion, differences in interpretation, or simply the challenge of measuring an earthwork that a field boundary has since cut clean through. Enclosures of this general type are common across Ireland and are often associated with early medieval settlement, though without excavation the function of any individual example remains uncertain. What makes this one quietly interesting is precisely the layering of evidence: an ancient boundary, partially legible, crossed by a much later agricultural division, all of it sitting near the top of a slope in the Comeragh uplands with the ground falling sharply away to the south.

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Pete F
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