Enclosure, Tulla, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Tulla, Co. Limerick

In a soggy field in County Limerick, a low earthen bank traces an oval in the grass roughly 26 metres from end to end.

It sits just 30 metres west of the Ahaphuca River, which runs along the townland boundary between Tulla and Cullane South, and it has been quietly holding its shape there for long enough to appear on the very first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, published in 1840. That alone gives some measure of its age; the first OSi surveys were among the most systematic landscape records Ireland had ever seen, and anything already established enough to be marked on them was plainly part of the countryside well before the nineteenth century.

By the time the 25-inch revision came out in 1897, the enclosure had been mapped with a little more precision. Surveyors recorded a roughly circular area approximately 25 metres in diameter, bounded by a bank running from the north-west to the north-east, with the remainder of the circuit reduced to a scarp, a low step or slope in the ground where the original bank has worn down over time. Enclosures of this general type, a roughly circular or oval area defined by an earthen bank, are common across Ireland and often date to the early medieval period, though without excavation it is impossible to say more about this particular example. What the record does confirm is that the monument remained legible enough in the landscape for Martin Fitzpatrick to compile a survey entry as recently as November 2021, drawing on Digital Globe and Google Earth orthoimages taken between 2011 and 2013, both of which show the oval outline clearly from above.

The site lies in wet pasture, which is worth bearing in mind before any visit. Ground conditions near the Ahaphuca River are likely to be soft underfoot for much of the year, and the enclosure itself sits close enough to the watercourse that waterproof footwear would be sensible in any season other than a dry summer. The bank is most easily appreciated from aerial imagery rather than at ground level, where the gradual wearing of the scarp sections makes the circuit harder to read. Landowner permission would be needed before approaching across the field, and the surrounding pasture gives no indication from a distance that anything lies within it.

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Pete F
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