Enclosure, Ballyelan, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Enclosures
Two upright stones stand quietly in the south-west corner of a field in Ballyelan, roughly 0.
9 metres apart and aligned on a rough west-south-west to east-north-east axis. Nobody recorded why they are there. The larger of the two reaches 0.8 metres high; the other is considerably shorter and flatter, at just 0.28 metres. Around them, the ground still holds the shape of an enclosure, a roughly sub-rectangular area measuring approximately 30 metres north to south and 35.6 metres east to west, defined by a combination of scarped edge and earthen bank. It is the kind of place that registers as slightly off, a gentle unevenness in a working pasture, before you realise you are standing inside something that was deliberately made.
The enclosure was recorded and compiled by Denis Power, with details uploaded in August 2011. A scarp, essentially a deliberately cut or shaped slope in the ground, defines the south-west to south-east edge, reaching a height of 1.4 metres and a width of 0.95 metres at its best-preserved section, where fragmentary stone facing still survives along the south-west to north-west stretch. Moving north-north-east to south-east, the scarp becomes heavily eroded, growing shallow and uneven. The earthen bank that closes the south-east to south-west arc of the enclosure survives to an internal height of 0.4 metres and an external height of 1.15 metres, though it is now substantially masked by overgrowth. A small heap of loose stone sits adjacent to the south-east, and a solitary boulder rests at the base of the scarp near the west-north-west. The interior, under grass, slopes gently downward toward the east. Enclosures of this general type, whether used for settlement, agriculture, or ritual purposes, are common across the Irish midlands and the Munster counties, though their individual histories are rarely recoverable.
The site sits on a break in a south-facing slope, currently in pasture, with a farm passage running immediately outside the enclosing element to the south. That passage is probably your most practical guide to the perimeter once you are on the ground, as the bank itself is overgrown and easy to misread as ordinary field boundary material. The two standing stones in the south-west quadrant are the most immediately legible features; the scarp is clearest along the south-west to north-west arc, where the stone facing gives it some definition. Low winter light, when vegetation has died back, makes the earthworks considerably easier to read.