RPS Cairns surveyed the Cabragh Wetlands and surrounding area in 1994. They found evidence of at least four periods of human activity. Features found include ring barrows, ring forts, tower house, moated site, the nearby Holycross Abbey, and Earthworks. Details from their report are given below. These sites show that people lived here at least since the Bronze Age. We will have pictures of examples of these features on the website soon.

 

Ringbarrows are preshitoric burial mounds consisting of a circular md or level area enclosed by a fosse and low external bacnk. Excavations have shown that they cover a burial, generally a cremation, which can be enclosed in a stone box. They have been dated to the Late Bronze Age (1200-500BC) and the Iron Age (500BC to 500AD)

A ringfort is an enclosed Early Christian farmstead. it is basically a cicular area enclosed by an earthen bank formed of material thrown up from a fosse dug up outside. Generally there is only one bank but sometimes, as in the case of one of the ringforts at Cabragh, there are two banks. Excavations at other sites have shown that, within the ringfort were dwellings and outhouses built with timber posts and thatched roofs. Walls were made of wattle, mud or sods. Mist of the rignforts are thought to ahve been built between 500AD and 1000AD.

 

Moated sites were defensive sites with a wide fosse or moat, ofen water filled and a substanital bank. The enclosure protected dwelling and outhouses, usually made of wood.

The Abbey of Holycross is a Cistercian Foundation dating to the late twelfth/early thirteenth century. It underwent rebuilding in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and much of the present remains date to that period. Notable features are the deilia and a stone shrine in the south transept which probably housed the abbey's famous relic of the Cross. Also of hote and the mayn carvings and mason's ,marks thoughout the abbey and the remnants of a painted hunting scene. The abbey was restored between 1971 and 1975.