Enclosure, Brackloon, Co. Limerick

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Brackloon, Co. Limerick

In the south-east corner of a field of rough, wet pasture in Brackloon, County Limerick, a low earthwork curves through the grass in a shape somewhere between a semicircle and the letter D.

It is easy to miss, and for a long time it was. The feature does not appear at all on the first Ordnance Survey mapping of the area in the 1840s, yet by the time the more detailed 25-inch edition was produced in 1897, surveyors had noticed it and recorded its distinctive curved outline. Whatever it was built for, and whenever exactly it was made, it had managed half a century of cartographic invisibility.

When archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of Ireland visited in 2008, they found a D-shaped area measuring roughly 15.5 metres from north-north-west to south-south-east, with a straight side along the south-east running approximately 23 metres. Enclosures of this general type, defined by a scarp and a fosse, were common features of the Irish landscape across many centuries; a scarp is simply a steep face of earth, while a fosse is a ditch, and together they form a modest but deliberate boundary. Here, the scarp stands about 0.7 metres high and 1.3 metres wide, visible along much of the western and northern arc. The fosse beside it is up to 5 metres wide overall, though shallow now at around 0.2 metres deep, worn down by time and grazing. A subtriangular area adjoins the scarp at the north-west, defined by a low linear bank some 12 metres long with a short return running back to the east, adding a further wrinkle of complexity to the plan that the surveyors carefully recorded in sketch form. The interior is grass-covered and uneven underfoot.

The monument sits in agricultural land, so access depends on the usual courtesies extended to working farms. The earthwork is subtle enough that aerial imagery is arguably the clearest way to appreciate its shape; it shows up as a distinct semicircular form on Digital Globe orthophotos from 2011 to 2013 and on Google Earth imagery captured in June 2018. On the ground, the best approach is from the west or north, where the scarp is most legible. The wet, rough nature of the pasture means the ground holds its archaeology well but also holds water, and the site is easier to read in drier conditions when the grass is lower and the slight undulations of the interior are more visible.

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