Enclosure

The National Monuments Service's description

A circular enclosure indicated as ‘B’ on a map published by Prim in 1872-3 and described as one of two, ‘raths on Mr. White’s farm; nearly obliterated (1872-3, 225). In the 19th century a number of the enclosures in Dunbell Big were excavated (Prim 1852-3, 119-27; 1853-5, 397-408). Prim (1852-3, 120-26) states that, ‘At a distance of two or three fields from the great rath [KK024-016---- = E]’, there are three other enclosures [KK024-010001- = D; KK024-011---- = C; KK024-012---- =B based on Prim’s map 1872-3, 225], ‘situated each about four hundred feet [c. 122m] from the other…One of these enclosures was levelled and tilled, without being trenched, a considerable time since. A second was partially trenched in the month of May, 1842, for the purpose of spreading out on the surrounding land, as a manure, the material of which it was composed, a rich black clay largely impregnated with organic remains. The third rath has now been subjected to the same process [‘trenched’ and levelled] for a similar purpose, and thus each of these three forts is now nearly obliterated’. In the third enclosure several artefacts were uncovered as well as an, ‘enormous quantity of bones of animals was everywhere met with. These chiefly consist of remains of deer, oxen, horses, swine, the calf and domestic fowl, the two first being the most numerous…The largest quantity of bones was found in the inner fosse…However, bones were found in thick layers all through the central mound of the rath to the depth of a couple of feet from the surface. The cooking places, in which the flesh of these animals was dressed for use, were also found. They consisted of eight or ten small pits, circular in form, and not of greater diameter than a foot and a-half, or depth than two feet. Each was quite full of charcoal, burned stones, and charred bones. Some of the deposits of ashes were as white as turf ashes, whilst there was also remains of wood not entirely consumed. Fragments of a substance, resembling slag or clinkers, were also found in some of these pits, which appeared to have been used as furnaces wherein were forged the rude iron implements of which specimens turned up. These cooking pits and furnaces were not faced with stones, but were simply dug in the floor of the rath’. Amongst the finds there were portions of nine querns, one of which was decorated with ‘concentric mouldings’; hone stones; ‘piles of round pebbles’; ‘small flat, rounded stones, pierced in the centre’; ‘circlets of black slate and jet’; bone objects including pins and beads and a comb; a bronze pin and two fibulae; a small iron square bell and other iron objects including a fibula, an axe-head, knife blades, a chisel, a small reaping-hook and a horse-shoe and a few fragments of ‘very coarse baked and glazed pottery’. In a subsequent article, Prim (1853-3, 402) mentions that, ‘no further traces of pottery ware of any kind have been discovered in any of the Dunbel raths since 1852, when I had only to report the finding of a few small fragments of a single vessel’.
There are several ringforts/enclosures in the vicinity, a ringfort (KK024-011----) c. 140m to the WNW; another (KK024-010001-) c. 280m to the W and another (KK024-014----) c. 200m to the SSW and two enclosures (KK024-013001-; KK024-013002-) c. 170m to the N. This monument has been completely quarried out, as have KK024-010001- and KK024-014----.

See attached:
KK024-012----_01 Prim's map 1872-3, 225

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of upload: 9 November 2021

References

Prim, J.G.A. 1872-3 The ogham monuments of Kilkenny, being a letter from Samuel Ferguson, Esq. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquarians of Ireland 12, 222-38.

Prim, J.G.A. 1852-3 Excavation of a rath at Dunbel, County of Kilkenny. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquarians of Ireland 2, 119-27.