Ecclesiastical enclosure, Lacka, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Lacka, Co. Tipperary

On the western bank of the Little Brosna River in upland Tipperary, a large semicircular enclosure curves across the ground and drops away into a river ravine, its shape suggesting an early ecclesiastical site that once organised the landscape around it in ways that are now mostly invisible.

The enclosure measures roughly 140 metres north to south and 80 metres east to west, dimensions that place it firmly in the category of significant early Christian foundations rather than a modest local chapel site. What makes it quietly arresting is not what survives in height but what survives in plan, and in purpose.

Within the enclosure, two features tell different parts of the same long story. In the northern sector, grass-covered wall-footings of a possible building, approximately 10 metres by 12 metres and still rising to about half a metre, hint at a structure whose exact function remains uncertain. Elsewhere inside the boundary sits a children's burial ground, defined by a drystone wall. These sites, sometimes called cillíní in Irish tradition, were used for the interment of unbaptised infants and others considered outside the formal rites of the Church, and they appear with some frequency inside or immediately beside early ecclesiastical enclosures across Ireland, where the consecrated ground of an older, possibly pre-Norman foundation offered an alternative sanctity. The combination of a substantial enclosure, the ghost of a building, and a cillín suggests a site with considerable depth of use across many centuries, even if no documentary record has been attached to it by name.

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Pete F
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