Field system, Ballycore, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Ballycore, Co. Wicklow

On a steep-sided ridge in County Wicklow, the earthworks at Ballycore are the kind of feature that most walkers would pass without a second thought, reading the landscape as simply uneven ground.

Spread across roughly fourteen hectares, the site preserves a series of banks, fosses, and trackways that together constitute a medieval field system, a rare survival of the organised agricultural and territorial boundaries that once structured rural life in this part of Leinster.

What makes Ballycore genuinely interesting is the company these field remains keep. At the south-western end of the ridge sits a motte and bailey, a form of fortification introduced to Ireland by the Normans in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, consisting of a raised earthen mound, the motte, alongside a lower enclosed courtyard, the bailey. At the north-eastern end lies a possible moated site, another medieval form, typically a square or rectangular platform surrounded by a water-filled or dry ditch, associated with the defended farmsteads of Anglo-Norman settlers. The field system runs between these two features along the spine of the ridge, suggesting that the banks and trackways were part of the same broader landscape of medieval occupation and land management rather than survivals from a different era entirely. Together, they sketch out something of the social and agricultural geography of a community that held this particular ridge as a working, organised place.

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