Enclosure, Dundrum, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
Beneath the fairways of Dundrum House golf course in County Tipperary, there may once have been a circular enclosure, the kind of earthwork that in Ireland typically served as a farmstead, ritual site, or place of local significance across many centuries.
The trouble is, nobody can be quite sure any more. No surface trace of it survives.
The enclosure is known only from a single aerial photograph, taken on 16 April 1974 as part of a Geological Survey of Ireland survey flight. From the air, cropmarks and soil variations can reveal the outlines of buried or levelled features invisible at ground level, and that photograph, catalogued as GSI R. 432/3, showed a roughly circular form on a low rise of ground with open views in every direction. Such elevated positions were frequently chosen for enclosures, offering both practical visibility and a certain presence in the landscape. At some point after that photograph was taken, the site was incorporated into the golf course attached to Dundrum House, and the construction work associated with it appears to have removed whatever earthwork remained. By the time anyone looked again, there was nothing left to see.