Enclosure, Carrigeensharragh, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Carrigeensharragh, Co. Tipperary

Beneath an orchard in Carrigeensharragh, County Tipperary, the faint outline of an ancient enclosure persists, though only just.

Around 1940 the earthwork was levelled, reducing what had been a substantial oval monument to little more than a slight rise in the ground and the memory of a landowner who could still recall a low bank tracing its circuit.

The enclosure is known from two editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps. The first, published in 1840, shows a limekiln, a small stone structure used for burning limestone to produce agricultural lime, sitting within the north-eastern sector of the monument. By the time the second edition was surveyed in 1906, the monument was recorded in more detail: an oval enclosure roughly 63 metres north to south and 53 metres east to west, ringed by a bank and with a fosse, or external ditch, visible along the northern sector. Enclosures of this type, typically formed by a raised earthen bank and accompanying ditch, are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, often associated with early medieval settlement, though the precise date and function of this particular example is not recorded. What the maps also capture is the enclosure's awkward relationship with the local townland boundary, which cut across its western side, a detail that remains physically legible on the ground today, with that boundary still in place.

Visiting now, the orchard offers little in the way of obvious archaeology. The slight rise that may mark the eastern quadrant is the most a careful eye is likely to pick out. The western townland boundary, still intact, provides the most concrete connection to the monument's former extent.

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