Author: Grace Dennis-Toone
Dennis-Toone, Grace, 2019 When is a ringwork a ringwork? Identifying the ringwork castles of County Wexford with a view to reconsidering Irish ringwork classification, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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County Wexford, Ireland, has been a frontier for much of Ireland's monumental history. As the landing site of the Anglo-Normans in 1169CE County Wexford provides a strong backdrop for this study into one of the earliest colonial fortifications of the Anglo-Normans conquest of Ireland: the ringwork castle. A ringwork castle is a defendable earthwork with the key features of a bank, ditch and fosse, but the site type has a complex relationship with archaeology as it is difficult to identify in the field. This research investigates the ringwork castles of Co. Wexford, as part of a wider evaluation of the colonial landscape of medieval Wexford during the Anglo-Norman conquest period. A total of sixteen sites within medieval Wexford have previously been identified, namely by Billy Colfer, Terry Barry, the Archaeological Inventory and the Archaeological Survey of Ireland. The research evaluates whether each of these sites are indeed ringwork castles, drawing on both original surveys and recent archaeological work. The findings of this research further highlight the issues with classifying this site type in Ireland and the constantly changing understanding of the ringwork morphology.
Keywords: archaeology, ringwork, Ireland, castle, earthwork
Subject: Archaeology thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2019
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Heather Burke