Enclosure, Mayladstown, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
On a north-facing slope in the rolling terrain of County Tipperary, the ground in one corner of a pasture field carries a faint restlessness, a subtle disturbance in the soil that hints something once stood here.
There is nothing to see now. No earthwork, no ridge, no ring of stones. The circular enclosure that occupied this spot has been levelled completely, leaving the land as blank as any other grazed field sloping gently down toward a stream that feeds into the Lingaun River.
The enclosure appeared on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840, drawn as a circular form on the hillside, and it was still recorded in that same shape on the revised edition published between 1901 and 1905. Circular enclosures of this kind, sometimes called raths or ringforts, were typically used as enclosed farmsteads during the early medieval period in Ireland, defined by an earthen bank and ditch encircling a domestic area. At some point in the twentieth century, this one was removed entirely, along with two field boundaries that had run along its eastern side and to the south. A second enclosure was recorded roughly 180 metres to the east, suggesting this part of Mayladstown once held a small cluster of such monuments, though that one too has left no trace above ground.
