Earthwork, Srahane East, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Srahane East, Co. Limerick

In a field of reclaimed grassland in Srahane East, County Limerick, a circular earthwork sits almost entirely invisible to anyone walking past it.

There is no mound to speak of, no visible bank, no obvious depression in the ground. What betrays its presence is a cropmark, a phenomenon where buried features such as ditches or walls cause the vegetation growing above them to behave differently, producing variations in colour or growth that only become legible from the air, and usually only in certain conditions of light and drought.

The site was first clearly identified in an oblique aerial photograph taken on 5 October 2002, catalogued as ASIAP 330 (27/29), which captured the cropmark of a circular area defined by a ditch running around its perimeter. That initial photograph was followed by further confirmation from Ordnance Survey Ireland orthoimagery and a Digital Globe orthophoto taken between 2011 and 2013, both of which showed the outline of the earthwork with reasonable clarity. Google Earth imagery has since provided additional views of the fosse, the term used for the enclosing ditch of such a feature, which traces a near-complete circle roughly 25 metres in diameter. The record was compiled by Caimin O'Brien and uploaded to the national inventory in November 2021. Beyond what the aerial evidence reveals, nothing more specific about the earthwork's age or original function has been recorded; it remains unexcavated and unclassified beyond its physical form.

There is nothing to mark the site on the ground, and no formal access or signage. The surrounding land is improved agricultural grassland, which is precisely why the earthwork is most likely to show up in aerial or satellite imagery during a dry summer, when buried ditches retain moisture differently from the surrounding soil and the contrast becomes visible from above. Anyone curious enough to look it up on Google Earth or the OSi map viewer will find the faint circular outline if they know where to search in Srahane East, and that, for the moment, is probably the most reliable way to see it at all.

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Pete F
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