Ringfort, Island, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Ringforts
A low, grassy swell in the landscape of Island townland in County Wexford is easy to miss, yet it preserves, in subdued form, the outline of a ringfort, one of the most common monument types in early medieval Ireland.
Ringforts were typically circular enclosures defined by earthen banks and ditches, used as farmsteads and defended homesteads from roughly the sixth to the twelfth century. This one is easy to overlook precisely because time and agriculture have worn it down to almost nothing: a gently raised circular area about thirty-five metres across, rising no more than half a metre at its highest point, its grass covering giving little away to a passing eye.
The Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839 recorded the enclosure as a circular feature some forty-five metres in diameter, which suggests the earthwork was somewhat more legible in the nineteenth century than it is today. The discrepancy between that earlier measurement and the current visible diameter hints at gradual erosion and agricultural pressure over the intervening period. A field bank running roughly north-north-east to south-south-west now bisects the site, cutting across the old enclosure and further obscuring its original form. This kind of bisection is a familiar story across Ireland, where later field boundaries were laid down with little regard for the archaeology beneath them, leaving monuments caught awkwardly between uses.
