Ring-ditch

The National Monuments Service's description

Located at what was probably the crest of an E-facing slope overlooking the valley of the River Liffey before it was flooded and turned into the Pollaphuca reservoir. The water of the reservoir has eroded away the topsoil and a lot of the subsoil on a fairly level plateau. Judging by the little cliff around the normal edge of the full reservoir about 30-40cm of subsoil has been removed at the edge of the shore where wave action would perhaps erode more of the soil, but the topsoil and some amount of subsoil has been removed from the extensive ground exposed now at the SE edge of Burgage More townland. Some NE-SW furrows are visible c. 2.5m apart, probably from Lazy bed cultivation. The cursus (WI005-124----) is in full view at the top of a hill to the E. A second ring-ditch (WI005-129----) is 25m to the S (160 degrees magnetic) of this monument.
It is about two weeks since first reported and they have dried out to such an extent that they were difficult to identify. We used trowels to scrape over them. The subsoil is hard yellow clay but the fill of the ditch is a softer grey/brown colour with flecks of charcoal and can be identified by feel as much as by sight. This is a circular area (int. diam. 4.15m E-W; 4.14m N-S; ext. diam. 4.53m E-W; 4.58m N-s). The ditch is remarkably regular (Wth 16cm to 26cm). There is a break in the ditch (Wth 1.85m) at SE (145 degrees magnetic), which is too wide to be an entrance to a hut-site and it did not have post-holes, so this is likely to be a barrow. There were no features in the interior except a large blob of clay (diam. 35cm) NE of the centre that has a red/brown hard surface, which is natural and probably some form of iron-pan.

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien based on details provided by Michael Moore

Date of upload: 4 October 2018