Earthwork, Cush, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ritual/Ceremonial
At first glance, a gently raised oval of pasture in County Limerick might not detain the casual walker for long.
But the earthwork at Cush sits within a wider archaeological complex, and what the ground is quietly doing here, lifting itself into a flat-topped platform above a ravine, marks it as something older and more deliberate than the surrounding farmland might suggest.
The monument sits immediately south-west of the Glounnacroghery Stream, in the northern quadrant of an archaeological grouping that encompasses several related features in the townland. It measures roughly 24 metres north-west to south-east and 28 metres north-east to south-west, its edges defined by a scarp, essentially a steep earthen slope, that overlooks a ravine to the north-east. An external fosse, a defensive ditch running around the outside, is visible from the east around to the south-south-east. The antiquarian T. J. Westropp noted it in 1918 as one of the rings flanking the gully of Glounnacroghera, grouping it with its neighbours rather than treating it in isolation. The archaeologist Seán P. Ó Ríordáin, writing in 1940, described it as one of three forts in the townland of Cush and classified it as belonging to the raised-centre, flat-top kind, a category of enclosure where the interior platform is distinctly elevated above the surrounding ground surface. Interestingly, it does not appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840, though by the 1897 twenty-five-inch edition it is clearly depicted as a raised oval area. The fosse to the south-east, now scrub-filled, is still legible on later Cassini editions of the six-inch map.
The earthwork lies in working pasture, so access requires consideration of the land and livestock. Its outline remains visible on satellite imagery, which can help orient a visitor before approaching on the ground. The scrub-filled fosse to the south-east is perhaps the most tangible feature to seek out at close quarters, its vegetation marking the line of the ditch where the open ground gives little else away. The ravine edge to the north-east offers the clearest sense of why this particular rise of land was chosen and shaped.