Enclosure, Ballynilard, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
In a level pasture field in County Tipperary, the ground holds a quiet secret that would be almost entirely invisible to anyone walking past without knowing to look.
A rectangular enclosure, roughly 48 metres east to west and 22 metres north to south, survives here as a series of low earthen scarps, the most pronounced of which rises to about 75 centimetres at the eastern end of its southern side. That is barely knee-height, and yet it is the most legible edge of what was once a deliberately bounded space.
An enclosure of this kind, defined by a scarp and an associated fosse (a shallow ditch cut into the earth to define or defend a boundary), is a monument type found widely across Ireland, though individual examples vary considerably in date and function. Some enclosed farmsteads, others ceremonial or assembly spaces; without excavation, the purpose of this particular one remains open. What is known is that it was identified not by ground survey but through aerial photography in May 2003, the slight differences in crop growth and soil moisture reading as geometry from above that the eye misses at ground level. The enclosure shares a fosse with a second enclosure to its south, the two apparently laid out together or at least connected through a common boundary. The northern side has suffered: a linear drain running roughly north-west to south-east has cut through it, erasing part of the original outline. A channel roughly six metres wide also crosses the interior, running approximately north to south, slightly west of centre. Whether this is an original feature or a later modification is not recorded.
The monument has been absorbed into the working agricultural landscape and is now grazed as ordinary pasture, its earthworks continuing to weather slowly with each season.