Earthwork, Ballynatona, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Ballynatona, Co. Limerick

What remains of the earthwork at Ballynatona is, by most measures, almost nothing.

A single quadrant of what was once a roughly circular raised platform survives in a field of pasture in County Limerick, and even that remnant is legible mainly because a loose arc of trees traces its outer edge from the south-west around to the north-west. Without those trees, and without the particular angle of light that low winter sun can throw across old ground, there would be little to catch the eye at all.

The monument was recorded in its more complete form on the Ordnance Survey's 25-inch map of 1897, where it appears as a raised sub-circular platform approximately 50 metres in diameter, defined by a scarp, the term for a steep slope or drop that marks the edge of an earthen feature. Notably, it does not appear on the earlier six-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1840, which may reflect a gap in mapping detail rather than the monument's absence. At some point after 1700, two field boundaries were cut through it, one running north-west to south-east across the western side, and another running east to west across the south-west. These later boundaries effectively quartered the monument, and the levelling that followed, whether from ploughing, drainage work, or simple agricultural pressure over generations, removed all but the south-western quadrant. A nearby enclosure, a separate but related type of archaeological feature, lies roughly 80 metres to the south-east. The record was compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded to the national database in October 2021, drawing on aerial photography including a Bord Gáis Éireann survey image and Google Earth orthoimagery captured between 2011 and 2013.

The site sits in working pasture 175 metres north-west of the townland boundary with Garrynalyna, and access would require landowner permission. On the ground, there is very little to orientate by beyond the curve of trees that marks the surviving arc of the old scarp. Aerial or satellite imagery gives a far clearer sense of the platform's former extent than anything visible at field level. Those with an interest in earthwork archaeology may find it useful to compare the 1897 OSi 25-inch mapping with current imagery to appreciate how much has been lost, and how much the post-1700 field system reshaped the landscape around it.

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