Settlement deserted - medieval, Curraghglass, Co. Tipperary

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Settlement Sites

Settlement deserted – medieval, Curraghglass, Co. Tipperary

At Curraghglass in County Tipperary, a small medieval settlement has all but dissolved back into the landscape.

What remains is easy to overlook: the poorly preserved shell of a rectangular church, built from roughly coursed limestone boulders, sitting on a slight rise of natural rock outcrop amid undulating countryside. There is no village, no graveyard wall, no obvious sign that people once organised their lives around this spot. The building is the last legible mark of a community that has otherwise vanished entirely.

The church itself is classified as a deserted medieval settlement, a category that captures the frustrating incompleteness of many rural Irish sites, where the human occupation is known or inferred but the physical evidence has been reduced to foundations, humps in the ground, or, in this case, a single ruined structure. An aerial photograph taken in 1973 appeared to show earthworks to the north-east and east of the church, features that might have suggested additional settlement remains nearby. On closer examination, however, these were assessed as natural formations rather than the traces of buildings or enclosures. The landscape, in other words, was mimicking archaeology, offering shapes that promised more than they delivered.

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