Embanked enclosure in Carn Beg

Situated on a slight SW-facing slope. Wright (1758, vol. 3, 9-10, pl. 3) records and illustrates the remains of two concentric stone circles enclosed by an earthen bank with an external fosse. Outside this earthwork is a further stone circle enclosing all the other monuments. All the features were open to the E in the eighteenth century, probably because they were damaged by an avenue leading to Carn House, which is marked on the 1835 edition of the OS 6-inch map, and which now leads to the clubhouse of a golf course. There was an entrance, undoubtedly original, in the earthen bank at W, but both internal stone circles may have had an entrance at NW. Morris records (1907, 1, 4, 61) that the monument was completely removed at that time, but he probably sought it in Ballynahattin townland. However, a text analysis revealed that Wright placed the monument ‘on the Planes (sic) of Ballynahaitinne', not in that townland as such (Buckley 1988, 53-4). The site is now recognised as the cropmark of a complex enclosure identified from an aerial photograph (CUCAP: BGL, 40) in the adjacent townland of Carn Beg. The cropmark is of a large enclosure (diam. c. 110m) defined by the negative mark of what is probably a wide earthen bank and traces of a fosse feature. In the interior are the negative cropmarks of two concentric gapped features (ext. diam. c. 50m int. diam. c. 30m), undoubtedly the stone circles which are S of the centre of the embanked enclosure. Archaeological testing (96E0321) immediately outside the embanked enclosure to the S failed to produce any related material (Murphy 1996). See the attached image from Wright's Louthiana and CUCAP BGL040, 17 July 1971 The above description is derived from both the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Louth' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1986) and the 'Archaeological Survey of County Louth' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1991). Date of revised upload: 18 December 2017 Compiled by Geraldine Stout / Michael Moore