Enclosure, Brickendown, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Brickendown, Co. Tipperary

On an east-facing slope in improved pasture at Brickendown, a circular earthen enclosure sits quietly in the Tipperary landscape, its bank still well preserved after what are almost certainly many centuries of existence.

What makes it quietly unusual is not the enclosure itself, common enough across Ireland, but what has been found within and along its edges: a ditch-barrow positioned off-centre inside the interior, and a possible bullaun stone resting at the base of the bank to the northwest.

The enclosure measures twenty-four metres in diameter and is defined by a bank that spreads to just over six metres in overall width, narrowing to less than a metre at the top. The bank stands about 1.2 metres on the exterior face and 0.7 metres on the interior. A formal entrance, nearly four metres wide at its outer edge and just over two metres at its base, opens to the east. The interior slopes gently in the same eastward direction. Placed within the enclosure, offset towards the west, is a ditch-barrow, a type of funerary or ritual monument characterised by a central mound surrounded by a ditch. Its presence inside the enclosure suggests either a layering of use across different periods, or a deliberate association between the two structures. The possible bullaun stone at the northwestern bank adds another layer of complexity; bullauns are basin-shaped depressions worn or carved into rock, often associated with early Christian sites and occasionally with older ritual practices, though the function of any individual example is rarely straightforward to interpret. Whether this depression qualifies as a true bullaun remains uncertain, but its position at the foot of an ancient earthwork is the kind of detail that tends to accumulate meaning over time.

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Pete F
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