Enclosure, Curraghadobbin, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Curraghadobbin, Co. Tipperary

On a south-facing slope in County Tipperary, a large oval earthwork sits quietly under grass, largely unnoticed by anyone not already looking for it.

The enclosure at Curraghadobbin measures roughly 43.7 metres north to south and 62.6 metres east to west, making it a substantial feature of the landscape, yet it registers today as little more than a raised area defined by a low scarp, the kind of subtle unevenness that a casual walker might attribute to natural variation in the ground.

What gives the site its particular interest is the gap between its earlier and later cartographic lives. On the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map, published in 1840, it appears clearly as an oval field, its outline recorded by surveyors who evidently saw it as a distinct and meaningful boundary. By the time the second edition was produced in 1906, it had disappeared from the map entirely. The ground itself, however, tells a more detailed story. In the western to north-north-eastern sector, there is evidence of a flattened bank, roughly 10.5 metres wide, with an interior height of around 0.46 metres and an exterior height of nearly a metre, accompanied by an outer fosse, essentially a ditch, approximately 4.5 metres wide and 0.74 metres deep. A fosse of this kind, running outside a bank, is a typical feature of enclosed settlements from the early medieval period in Ireland, though the date of this particular example has not been established. Along the southern edge, a curving field boundary now traces part of the enclosure's original line, meaning the old form has been absorbed, at least partially, into the working geometry of later agricultural land division.

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