Earthwork, Tullerboy, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ritual/Ceremonial
In a field in County Limerick, somewhere between the townlands of Ballintaw and Ballyculleen, a low rise in the grassland marks the outline of something considerably older than the laneway that now cuts straight through it.
The earthwork at Tullerboy is easy to miss on the ground, but from the air its shape becomes legible: a sub-rectangular platform, roughly 64 metres along its longer axis and 52 metres across, bounded on most sides by a scarp and an external fosse. A fosse, in this context, is simply a ditch dug to define or defend a boundary, the spoil from which typically formed the raised area it surrounds. That combination of raised interior and encircling ditch appears repeatedly across the Irish landscape in contexts ranging from early medieval settlement enclosures to later ringwork fortifications, though no such specific classification has been assigned to this particular site.
The monument sits 114 metres west of the Ballintaw townland boundary and 160 metres east of Ballyculleen, placing it in the interior of Tullerboy townland. It was recorded on the Ordnance Survey Ireland 25-inch map series, which gives some indication of its legibility in an earlier era, but by the time aerial survey work caught up with it, the traces were already faint. An oblique aerial photograph taken in September 2002 captured the outline clearly enough to confirm the monument's extent and roughly sub-rectangular shape. Later orthophotography taken between 2005 and 2012 showed only faint traces, and a Google Earth image from March 2016 picked out what appears to be a remnant of the external fosse along the western side. The record was compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded to the national monument database in March 2021.
For anyone inclined to look for it, the site lies in ordinary agricultural grassland, and the low scarp is the main thing to watch for at ground level. The laneway running roughly north-northeast to south-southwest transects the monument, which is both a useful navigational reference and a reminder of how much of the surrounding landscape has been quietly reorganised since the earthwork was first raised. The western fosse trace, noted on the 2016 imagery, may offer the clearest surviving physical feature, though conditions underfoot and the state of the grass will vary considerably by season. There is no visitor infrastructure here, and the record exists primarily as an archaeological note rather than a managed heritage site.