Enclosure in Roestown (ratoath By.) — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Roestown holds a large rath and burial ground beneath introduced soil, but the eastern triangle yielded a twenty-metre paddock with one tethering post. A narrow slot trench, perhaps holding wicker hurdles, faded where bedrock broke through, while a deep flared posthole stood beside a lightly metalled surface. Animals may have stood there for centuries, pulling at ropes while people watched from the rath. The ground kept that quiet transaction long after the hands disappeared.

While the large enclosure, rath and burial ground are preserved under introduced soil in a green area all the available external area was excavated (15E0125) under the direction of S. McGlade in 2018-19 (excavations.ie 2019:474). East of the large rath, in the triangular area available for excavation, two circular or penannular structures and one rectangular feature were recorded in a N-S line with a small enclosure just to the NE. Structure 6 was a large subcircular area (diam. c. 22m) defined by a narrow curvilinear slot-trench (Wth c. 0.35m; D c. 0.2m), but it only survived SW-W-NE and petered out elsewhere where the subsoil over the bedrock did not survive. There were no postholes in the slot-trench which may have held wooden or wicker hurdles but there was a deep posthole (D c. 0.4m) with a flared opening in the interior which had a lightly metalled surface (dims 12m x 5.75m) around it from which post-medieval material was recovered. It is thought that the enclosure may have functioned as a paddock with one tethering post. (McGlade 2020, vol. 1, 74-77) See the attached illustration from McGlade (2020, P 75) True location: ITM (696066, 752895) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 3 May 2022

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