Field system, Ballyholahan, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Ballyholahan, Co. Tipperary

Beneath a young conifer plantation in County Tipperary, a field system exists that no Ordnance Survey map has ever recorded.

It is invisible at ground level, leaving no ridge, furrow, or earthwork that a walker might notice underfoot. The only evidence for it is a single aerial photograph, reference Bruff 5/2095, in which a clearing of roughly sixty metres across reveals a set of parallel divisions running in a consistent south-west to north-east orientation, spaced approximately twenty metres apart.

Aerial photography has a long and productive history of revealing things the ground conceals, particularly in low, wet terrain where soil moisture picks up subtle differences in what lies beneath. Here, in a gently undulating, waterlogged clearing within what was, at the time of recording, about ten years of coniferous forestry, those moisture variations appear to have been enough to betray the underlying structure of an old field system. What that system dates to is unknown. The notes offer no period attribution, no associated finds, no comparable site. The parallel linear divisions are simply there, caught once from the air, and silent on the ground.

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Pete F
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