Enclosure, Ballynahinch, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
A low earthen bank running across pastureland in County Tipperary is easy to dismiss as a field boundary or the remnant of some forgotten agricultural arrangement.
This one, however, traces the outline of a large irregular enclosure on the north-facing slope of a gentle hill, measuring roughly 80 metres north to south and 36 metres east to west. An enclosure of this kind, defined by a continuous earthen bank rather than a stone wall or ditch, typically signals early medieval use, perhaps a ringfort or an ecclesiastical precinct, where the bank served both to demarcate territory and to offer a modest degree of protection or privacy.
What makes the site quietly compelling is its relationship to the ground immediately around it. Just to the east, in the adjacent field, sit the remains of Ballynahinch church and its graveyard. Local memory, passed down to at least one source familiar with the area, holds that this eastern field was always known as the church field, a piece of oral geography suggesting that the boundary between the enclosure and the church site is a later imposition rather than an original division. In other words, the enclosure and the ecclesiastical remains may once have formed part of the same complex, their separation a product of more recent land management rather than any ancient distinction. At the north-east angle of the enclosure, the bank itself appears to incorporate the walls of a possible house structure, built into or alongside the northern and eastern sides, adding another layer to what the site may once have contained.