Enclosure, Crohane, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
A circular earthwork sitting on an upland terrace in County Tipperary, this large enclosure was entirely unknown to the archaeological record until a routine aerial photograph taken on the 16th of April 1974 revealed its outline from above.
On the ground, its low bank blends quietly into the surrounding grassland, easy to walk across without registering as anything deliberate or ancient.
The enclosure sits on a flat east-west terrace cut into a north-facing slope, with open views sweeping from west through north to east, and higher ground rising to the south. It is a substantial monument: the interior measures roughly 44 metres north to south and 46 metres east to west, making it a notably large example of its type. The enclosing element is an earth and stone bank, around four metres wide at the base and just under two metres wide at the top, though it stands only 0.2 metres above the interior surface and 0.3 metres on the outer face. These are modest dimensions, worn down over centuries. There is no outer fosse, the term for a defensive ditch that typically accompanies such banks, and no visible entrance feature survives. A later field boundary running north to south cuts directly through the western side of the enclosure, destroying that portion of the bank entirely, which is one reason the monument is difficult to read from the surface. The photograph that first identified it was taken as part of a Geological Survey of Ireland series, the kind of systematic aerial programme that has quietly transformed understanding of the Irish landscape by revealing features invisible at ground level.
