Raheennamaghil, Pollagh, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Enclosures
In the townland of Pollagh, a public road cuts straight through what was once a large enclosure, bisecting it so cleanly that by the time cartographers revisited the site in 1900, only the southern half was considered worth recording.
The northern portion had already begun to slip from official view, and today satellite imagery suggests both halves have been levelled entirely, leaving a site that exists more as a cartographic memory than a visible feature in the landscape.
The enclosure at Raheennamaghil was a substantial one. Measuring approximately 65 metres north to south and 74 metres east to west, its roughly subcircular form places it in the broad category of enclosed settlements common across early medieval Ireland, where a ringfort or enclosure, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, served as a farmstead or place of local significance. The place-name itself offers a quiet clue to its character; "raheen" derives from the Irish "ráithín", a small or diminutive rath, though the dimensions here suggest something rather more considerable than the name implies. The road that now runs northwest to southeast through its centre would have been the decisive blow, gradually erasing whatever earthworks survived on the northern side while the southern arc held on for at least another generation before it too disappeared.