Enclosure, Ballynamuddagh, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Enclosures
In a patch of wet pasture in County Limerick, a low circular earthwork sits quietly in a field, its outline traced not by a fence or a wall but by a ring of bushes that have grown along its scarp edge.
From the air, the shape is unmistakable. At ground level, you could walk past it without registering anything more unusual than a slight rise in the ground and a slightly boggy field.
The enclosure sits around 150 metres north of the Assaroola River, which runs along the townland boundary between Ballynamuddagh and Boolanlisheen. Enclosures of this kind, broadly circular earthwork features defined by a raised bank or scarp, are among the most common field monuments in Ireland, and are generally associated with early medieval settlement, though many remain undated. What makes this particular example quietly interesting is the way it has shifted on paper over time. When the Ordnance Survey mapped the area for their six-inch series in 1840, they recorded it as circular. By the time the twenty-five-inch revision appeared in 1893, the same feature was shown as sub-rectangular, measuring roughly 45 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and 38 metres across. Whether that change reflects genuine physical alteration to the monument, a difference in surveying method, or simply a matter of draughtsman interpretation is not recorded. When the Archaeological Survey of Ireland visited in 1999, they described a raised circular area approximately 38 metres in diameter, defined by a scarp around 1.3 metres wide and 1.4 metres high. By that point, the north-east to south-west section of the scarp had been absorbed into a field boundary, with a drain running alongside it. A second enclosure is recorded 240 metres to the east.
The site lies in agricultural land and is not formally accessible to the public, so any approach would require the landowner's permission. For those interested in locating it, the outline is visible on Google Earth satellite imagery, where the ring of bushes delimiting the monument shows clearly against the surrounding pasture. The interior slopes gently to the south, and given the wet ground conditions near the Assaroola River, the site is best approached in drier months when the pasture is less waterlogged.
