Concentric enclosure, Ballynatona, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Enclosures
In a field of reclaimed pasture in County Limerick, a low circular earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, its rings of bank and fosse still legible from above even when they are easy to walk past at ground level.
The site, known as Lisnagreeve, is a concentric enclosure: a raised sub-circular platform roughly 40 metres in diameter, wrapped by an external bank, with a fosse, or defensive ditch, running between the two. This kind of layered, ringed arrangement sets it apart from the more common single-bank ringfort, suggesting a more complex or perhaps more deliberately defended original construction.
The earliest surviving cartographic record of the site comes from the 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey Ireland six-inch map, where it is marked by name and depicted as a large circular earthwork. By the time the 25-inch map was produced in 1897, the monument was being recorded as a raised sub-circular platform with an enclosing external bank, the surveyors noting what was already a partially compromised monument. A post-1700 field boundary running northeast to southwest had by then clipped the southeastern and southern edges of the enclosure, truncating what had once been a more complete circuit. That boundary, drawn through the earthwork by some later agricultural reorganisation, remains one of the more telling details of how farmed landscapes quietly consume older ones over time. The site sits approximately 140 metres northeast of the townland boundary with Spittle, placing it close to the margins of its own administrative territory.
The enclosure is not signposted and sits within working pasture, so access would depend on landowner permission. Its most legible form is from above: aerial photography, including Digital Globe orthoimages taken between 2011 and 2013 and imagery available through Google Earth, shows the circular form with reasonable clarity, the bank and fosse resolving into concentric rings against the surrounding field. At ground level, the raised platform and outer bank are the features most likely to catch the eye, particularly in low winter light when shadows throw earthworks into relief. The record was compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded to the national monuments database in October 2021.