Linear earthwork

The National Monuments Service's description

A linear boundary roughly (see also KK016-006----; KK016-006001- and KK016-006002-) extending for c. 5km from Kellymount Hill, on the SE edge of the Castlecomer Plateau, south-eastward to the River Barrow. The boundary, known as ‘Rathduff Trench’ is indicated on an early 17th-century barony map of Idrone published by Gerard Mercator (1606-41). The linear earthwork formed the part of the NW boundary of the Carlow barony, which at that stage extended into what has become part of the modern county of Kilkenny. The OS Letters (1839) refer to this trench as having similar traditions as those associated with the Black Pig’s Dyke and that though, ‘it is nearly blotted off the face of the land; but if the fragment of it which remains and the forts which were on it be marked [on the OS map], its outline will be well preserved’ (O’Flanagan 1930, vol. 1, 254-8 (85-7)). According to the O’Donovan (ibid.) the earthwork was known locally as ‘the Gripe of the Pig’ and according to local legend, ‘a poor widow living here in olde times had a pig which ran away from her into a subterraneous passage and that all the neighbours came to dig her out, but that they did not catch her until they had dug down to the Barrow. The “Gripe” they cut on this occasion and the stuff they threw up were visible about six generations ago, but the progress of cultivation has effaced both except a small part at Kellymount, where the trench (gripe) is still faintly traceable’.
Portion of this earthwork (KK016-006----), in Shankill townland, was excavated as part of the archaeological excavations on the Cork-Dublin gas pipeline (1981-2) (O’Flaherty 1987, 53-4). Pre-excavation the earthwork was visible as a low bank (H 0.7m) with a fosse (Wth 1.1m; D 1.2m) to the S (ibid.). However, excavation revealed that the bank had been disturbed when the fosse was recut in 1954 by the Land Commission as part of a modern drainage scheme (ibid.). The original fosse had been 5m wide and 0.9m deep (ibid.).

See attached:
KK021-006----_01 Extract from Mercator map

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of upload: 19 April 2021

References

O'Flaherty, B. 1987 A linear earthwork at Shankill, Co. Kilkenny. In R.M. Cleary, M. F. Hurley and E. A. Twohig (eds), Archaeological excavations on the Cork-Dublin gas pipeline (1981-82), 53-4. Cork Archaeological Studies No. 1. Department of Archaeology. University College, Cork.

O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1930 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Kilkenny collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1839. Bray.