Building, Ballynahinch, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Utility Structures
Tucked within the western sector of a larger enclosure at Ballynahinch in County Tipperary, a low curvilinear bank traces out the ghost of a structure that is easy to walk past without registering what you are looking at.
The feature is roughly semi-circular, measuring approximately twelve metres north to south and seven metres east to west, and what remains of the defining bank is modest in height, rising only around fifteen centimetres on the interior side and a fraction less on the exterior. It is the kind of earthwork that rewards a second glance.
The bank, about three and a half metres wide at its base and narrowing to around one and a half metres at the top, runs from the east around to the north-west, where it meets the scarp of the enclosure that contains it. An entrance roughly two metres wide sits in a short inward return on the eastern side, and beyond that the eastern boundary is largely open, leaving a gap of nearly eight metres. This combination, a curvilinear bank defining a sheltered area within a pre-existing enclosure, is a pattern sometimes associated with subsidiary structures inside a ringfort or cashel, the enclosed farmsteads that were the dominant settlement form in early medieval Ireland. Whether this particular building was a dwelling, a byre, or some kind of storage space is not something the earthwork itself can answer.