Moated site, Rosspile, Co. Wexford
In the valley of the north-south flowing Corock River in County Wexford lies the remnants of a medieval moated site at Rosspile, its rectangular outline still visible from above after centuries buried beneath the soil.
Moated site, Rosspile, Co. Wexford
The site sits on gently rolling ground about 300 metres west of the meandering river, where aerial photographs and cropmarks reveal a sophisticated defensive structure. The main enclosure measures roughly 40 metres north to south and 25 metres east to west, surrounded by two sets of ditches or water-filled moats that extend the overall footprint to approximately 55 by 40 metres.
What makes this site particularly fascinating is the extensive field system that surrounds it, discovered through a combination of aerial photography taken in 2006 and magnetic gradiometer surveys conducted in 2020. These investigations revealed a network of rectangular fields stretching north and east from the moated site, covering about 4 hectares, or 10 acres. The individual field plots vary in size from smaller parcels of 30 by 20 metres to larger sections measuring up to 60 by 50 metres, each defined by single drainage ditches.
Within these ancient field boundaries, the surveys detected patterns of cultivation ridges, suggesting this was once productive agricultural land carefully managed by the inhabitants of the moated site. This type of settlement, with its defensive moats and associated field systems, was typically occupied by Anglo-Norman colonists or prosperous farming families during the medieval period. The preservation of these features as cropmarks and magnetic anomalies offers a remarkable window into how the landscape was organised and farmed hundreds of years ago, long after the buildings themselves have vanished and the fields returned to pasture.





