Enclosure, Newpark, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
On the summit of Mount O'Meara in County Tipperary, there is a hilltop enclosure that has effectively vanished from the surface of the earth, yet remains on record as something that was once clearly there.
The grass grows unbroken across the high ground, offering no visible trace of whatever circular structure once defined this place. What makes it quietly curious is the particular way it was rediscovered in the documentary record: not through excavation or fieldwork, but through a nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey Namebook entry from 1840, which noted a circular enclosure at the summit, the same spot where surveyors later planted a triangulation station, one of the concrete or stone pillars used to establish precise geographical coordinates across the country during systematic mapping of Ireland.
The coincidence is telling. Hilltops with pre-existing enclosures were often practical choices for trigonometrical survey points, since the elevated, open positions that made ancient sites strategically or ceremonially significant also made them ideal for line-of-sight surveying work. The circular enclosure at Mount O'Meara likely belongs to a class of prehistoric or early medieval ringworks, though without excavation it is impossible to say more precisely what it was or when it was built. The 1840 Namebook record suggests it was at least partially legible to observers at that time, even if nothing now protrudes above ground level.