Field system, Lisduff, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Lisduff, Co. Tipperary

Beneath the flat, drained pasture at Lisduff in County Tipperary, a landscape of ditches and boundaries lies completely out of reach of anyone standing on it.

The field system here exists not as earthworks or stonework but as cropmarks, the subtle differential growth in grass and crops that betrays buried features to a camera mounted in a low-flying aircraft. At ground level, there is nothing to see at all.

In 1966, a series of aerial photographs taken as part of the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography captured the outlines of what appears to be an organised field system. The images show cropmarks of two parallel linear ditches running to the west of a cluster of ditch barrows, the latter being ring-shaped burial monuments defined by a surrounding ditch rather than an upstanding bank. Two further single ditches appear to the south and east of the same barrow group, suggesting that the field boundaries and the funerary monuments were laid out in some relationship to one another, though at what period and by whom remains unknown. The land itself was originally marshy ground along the Munster Blackwater, and has since been drained and reclaimed, which has flattened any surface trace the features might once have presented. The reclamation that made the land agriculturally useful is almost certainly what buried and obscured what lay beneath it.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Field system, Lisduff, Co. Tipperary. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement