Enclosure, Anglesborough, Co. Limerick

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Anglesborough, Co. Limerick

On the eastern bank of the River Aherlow, where the water itself serves as the boundary between the townlands of Anglesborough and Ballyduff, a roughly oval earthwork sits quietly in wet pasture, largely unvisited and only partially understood.

It measures approximately 53 metres northwest to southeast and 44 metres northeast to southwest, substantial enough dimensions to suggest this was once a place of some deliberate importance, yet its precise purpose remains an open question.

The enclosure has been known to cartographers, if not to most visitors, for well over a century and a half. The Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1840 recorded it as a raised circular area defined by a scarp, the term referring to a steep slope or near-vertical face formed either by deliberate cutting or by the gradual erosion of an earthen bank. By the time the more detailed 25-inch edition was published in 1897, surveyors noted a bank running from the western to the northern side, reduced to a scarp elsewhere, with an external fosse, that is, a ditch, visible along the northern to eastern arc. A separate D-shaped area, measuring roughly 30 metres east to west and 23 metres north to south, sits immediately to the northwest. The site's identity became a little clearer in November 1984, when aerial photographs taken for the Bórd Gáis Éireann Curraleigh West-Limerick gas pipeline survey identified it as a possible ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead, typically circular and defined by one or more earthen banks, that was the standard form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland. More recent satellite imagery, including Digital Globe orthoimages taken between 2011 and 2013 and Google Earth photographs, shows the earthwork now covered in trees, giving it a slightly mounded, wooded appearance against the surrounding fields.

The site lies in low-lying, wet ground beside the Aherlow, so appropriate footwear matters considerably here, particularly in the wetter months. The tree cover that now defines the enclosure makes it easier to spot from a distance than many comparable earthworks, which tend to flatten and dissolve into ploughed or heavily grazed land. Anyone approaching should be aware that this is private farmland, and permission from the landowner should be sought before visiting. The townland boundary runs along the river, so the enclosure sits just inside Anglesborough, though the broader landscape along this stretch of the Aherlow feels genuinely in-between, belonging to neither side in any very settled way.

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Pete F
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