Enclosure, Doon, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
On a limestone outcrop jutting from a ridge in County Tipperary, there is an enclosure where the boundary between natural geology and human construction has become almost impossible to read.
The site is roughly oval, measuring around 33 metres north to south and 50 metres east to west, and whoever built it made deliberate use of the rock already there. On the northern side, the ground simply drops away, a sheer fall of over seven and a half metres to a berm, which is a narrow flat ledge cut into the slope, before dropping a further six metres to ground level. That kind of vertical exposure was not incidental. It was the point. The eastern side of the enclosure needs no bank or scarp at all, because the natural ridge continues there, making any additional defence redundant.
The structure is what older Irish sources would call a dún or lios, terms referring to an enclosed, often defended settlement of the early medieval period, typically circular or oval and defined by earthen banks, stone walls, or, as here, a combination of scarping and natural cliff. Writing in 1907, a scholar named Power described it plainly as an artificial fort crowning the summit of a small limestone bluff, and the assessment still holds. The builders appear to have reshaped the hill itself during construction, cutting into the rock and piling loose stone to create a berm six to ten metres wide around much of the inner enclosure. A quarry now sits thirty to forty metres to the south, and the surrounding ground has been planted with conifers, which together have altered the immediate landscape considerably. The interior, which slopes steadily southward, is today heavily overgrown with trees and scrub, and the southern scarp is largely obscured by vegetation.
The site is not easy to read at ground level, and the tree cover makes the full geometry of the enclosure difficult to appreciate without prior knowledge of its shape. The northern drop is the clearest single feature, and the loose stones scattered across the northern slope give some sense of the original material used in construction. The field to the south-east remains under grass and offers a relatively open approach to the area, though the enclosure itself requires patience and some scrambling through scrub to properly investigate.