Linear earthwork, Curtlestown, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Ritual/Ceremonial
On a rocky, south-facing slope in Curtlestown, County Wicklow, a semicircular earthwork curves its way across the hillside for roughly 400 metres from east to west.
What makes it quietly peculiar is not its size alone, but the layering of different hands at work on it: a low, ancient-looking bank of earth and stone, a fosse cut into the uphill side, and then, along the central section, a later drystone wall rising considerably higher than anything beneath it, as though a subsequent occupant decided the original boundary needed reinforcing and simply built on top.
The basic structure follows a logic common to early Irish boundary-making. The bank itself is modest, only about 30 centimetres high and just over four metres wide, but the fosse, a ditch dug on the upslope northern side, adds a more deliberate defensive or demarcating quality. Digging a fosse on the uphill side rather than the lower one is characteristic of boundaries designed to impress or impede movement across a slope rather than to drain water. The drystone wall added along the centre of the bank is a different matter entirely: at 1.7 metres high and 1.4 metres wide, it is a substantial piece of construction that partly overlies the inner edge of the fosse, suggesting it came later and was built with somewhat different intentions. Significantly, this wall section now follows the townland boundary, meaning that at some point the older earthwork was adopted as an administrative line and reinforced accordingly. T. J. Westropp noted the feature in 1913, and his reference remains among the earliest recorded descriptions of the site.