Enclosure, Ballynabanoge, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Enclosures
Somewhere in the managed forestry of Ballynabanoge, a large earthwork sits quietly beneath a canopy of planted trees, its circular outline persisting in the landscape long after whatever purpose it once served has been forgotten.
What makes it particularly striking is its scale: the monument measures roughly 80 metres on its northeast to southwest axis and 70 metres northwest to southeast, making it a substantial presence even if the surrounding woodland now obscures it from casual ground-level observation. It belongs to a category of monument generally described as a multivallate enclosure, meaning it has multiple banks or ditches arranged concentrically, and the recorded external bank suggests a more elaborate construction than the simpler ringforts that dot the Irish countryside.
The site was recorded in the Sites and Monuments Record for County Limerick under the reference LI030-111----, and its outline appears clearly on the 1897 edition of the Ordnance Survey Ireland 25-inch map, where it was already being noted as a large subcircular earthwork. A related enclosure lies approximately 180 metres to the northeast, and the monument sits around 40 metres southeast of the townland boundary with Dohora. Research compiled by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly, uploaded to the Archaeological Survey of Ireland in October 2020, draws on aerial photographs taken by the Archaeological Survey in March 2006, as well as orthophotos from multiple sources spanning 2005 to 2018, all of which confirm the earthwork remains visible from above, its tree-planted interior forming a distinctive circular patch within the forestry.
Accessing the site on the ground requires some navigation through commercial forestry, and the experience of reading the earthwork is likely to be easier from aerial imagery than from within the plantation itself. The tree cover, while it complicates a visit, has in some ways helped preserve the monument's shape. Those with an interest in the site would do well to cross-reference the 1897 Ordnance Survey mapping with current satellite views to appreciate the continuity of the form across more than a century of observation, and to note how the relationship between this enclosure and its neighbour to the northeast raises questions about the organisation of activity in this part of Limerick that the surviving earthworks alone cannot answer.