Enclosure, Rathmore, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Rathmore, Co. Wicklow

Some archaeological sites announce themselves with tumbled masonry or a dramatic hilltop profile.

This one in Rathmore, County Wicklow, does the opposite: it has effectively vanished from the ground entirely, surviving only as a faint circular shadow visible from the air. The enclosure is roughly 25 metres in diameter, defined by what appears to be a low bank, with a possible entrance opening to the north-west. At ground level, there is nothing to see.

A ringfort, to give the broader class of monument its common name, is a roughly circular enclosure bounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and sometimes by stone walls. They were built predominantly during the early medieval period and served as farmsteads or homesteads for families of some local standing. The Rathmore example sits on level ground within gently undulating terrain, the kind of unremarkable agricultural setting where countless such enclosures once existed and where many have since been levelled by centuries of ploughing. Its survival, even in this reduced and near-invisible form, was confirmed through aerial photography. A nineteenth-century source adds an intriguing complication: Ordnance Survey letters compiled by O'Flanagan in 1928, drawing on earlier fieldwork, record a large ringfort somewhere in this townland, but the description could apply equally to this site or to a separate enclosure in the adjacent field to the east, recorded under the townland of Killoughter. Whether the two references describe one monument or two remains unresolved.

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