Enclosure, Cloghleigh, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
On the eastern shoulder of a low hillock in County Tipperary, just below the 432-foot mark indicated by a nearby triangulation pillar, sits a circular enclosure that has spent centuries quietly accumulating other people's problems.
Farmers clearing their fields of stones have used it as a convenient dump, filling and surrounding it with rubble until the original earthwork is half-buried beneath the evidence of centuries of agricultural tidying.
The enclosure itself measures roughly 26 metres north to south and 25 metres east to west, making it a modest but recognisable example of a type found widely across the Irish countryside. What distinguishes it slightly is the method of its construction: the interior appears to have been scooped into the hillslope, with the excavated earth thrown outward to form the enclosing bank rather than built up entirely from material brought in. The bank survives to an internal height of about half a metre and an external height of 0.4 metres, with a width of around 4.35 metres, modest dimensions that nonetheless preserve the essential shape. A second enclosure of the same broad type lies roughly 110 metres to the south, suggesting this corner of Tipperary once held more deliberate organisation of the landscape than its current condition of improved pasture might imply. Enclosures of this kind are a broad category in Irish archaeology, ranging from early medieval ringforts used as farmsteads to prehistoric ceremonial sites, and the accumulated field stones here make it difficult to read the site's original purpose with any confidence.