Enclosure, Bawn, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Bawn, Co. Tipperary

Beneath the topsoil of a working tillage field on an east-facing upland slope in County Tipperary, the ghost of a circular enclosure survives as little more than a faint depression in the ground.

Measuring approximately 35 metres in diameter, it is the kind of site that a passing walker would almost certainly miss entirely, its outline so thoroughly levelled that only a trained eye, or perhaps the right angle of low winter light, would reveal anything at all.

A bawn, in Irish archaeological usage, typically refers to a walled or embanked enclosure associated with an early settlement or defended farmstead, though the term was also applied later to the fortified yards surrounding tower houses. Here, little remains to confirm which tradition this particular feature belongs to. What can be said is that the site occupies rising ground in an upland area, a positioning consistent with early settlement patterns across Tipperary, where enclosed farmsteads were often sited to command a view over surrounding land while remaining sheltered from prevailing westerly weather. The fact that the enclosure has been reduced to near-invisibility by centuries of cultivation says something about the long agricultural use of this particular slope, fields worked so persistently that the earthworks which once defined this place have been almost entirely absorbed back into the land.

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