Enclosure, Athasselabbey, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
A circular earthwork sitting quietly in a pasture field is easy to walk past without a second glance, but the one near Athasselabbey in County Tipperary rewards closer attention.
Roughly oval in plan, measuring approximately 16 metres north to south and 21 metres east to west, it sits on a very gentle rise where north and east-facing slopes meet, tucked into the south-west corner of a large L-shaped field. A bank of earth and stone, still standing to an internal height of around 1.2 metres and slightly more on the outside, traces most of the circuit, though it has been worn down to a simple scarp along parts of the south-west to north-west arc. Ash trees have taken root along the top of the bank on the south-west to north-west stretch, their roots now doing much of the work of holding it together.
Enclosures of this type, defined by a raised bank and an external fosse (a ditch running around the outside), are a familiar feature of the Irish countryside and can date anywhere from the early medieval period onward. A fosse roughly 2.3 metres wide and half a metre deep runs along the north-east to south-east arc here, and it is shared with a second, conjoined enclosure immediately adjacent, suggesting the two were either laid out together or developed in close relation to one another over time. A possible entrance opens toward the east-north-east, which is a common orientation for enclosures of this kind. There is also a broader, less defined scarp further out on the downslope to the north, which curves toward the neighbouring enclosure before fading out, hinting at an outer boundary or an earlier phase of activity that was never completed or has simply not survived well.
The site sits in the shadow, so to speak, of Athasselabbey, the substantial Augustinian priory founded in the late twelfth century on the River Suir nearby, one of the largest medieval monastic complexes in Ireland. Whether this enclosure predates the abbey, was contemporary with it, or reflects some later use of the land is not recorded. What remains visible today is a low but legible earthwork, its bank still coherent enough to walk around, its relationship with the adjoining enclosure clearly readable on the ground.