Enclosure, Deerpark, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
Between the first Ordnance Survey and the present day, an old enclosure in Deerpark, County Tipperary, quietly changed shape, or at least appears to have done so.
When the surveyors mapped this upland ground in 1840, they recorded a circular enclosure; what survives now is rectangular, measuring roughly fifteen metres on its longer axis and nine metres across. Whether that discrepancy reflects a genuine transformation of the structure or simply an imprecise reading by nineteenth-century cartographers is an open question, and the site does not offer easy answers.
The enclosure sits on poorly drained high ground with open views in every direction, the kind of elevated position that tends to attract early settlement or territorial marking across many periods of Irish prehistory and early history. It is defined by a low earth and stone bank, around 1.7 metres wide, rising only 0.6 metres on its exterior face and a modest 0.2 metres on the interior. Beyond the bank there is a faint outer fosse, a shallow external ditch that once would have reinforced whatever boundary the bank was meant to create. Both features are now barely legible on the ground. The suspicion is that the enclosure's current rectangular form may owe something to the planting of the surrounding coniferous forest, whose machinery and drainage works have a long record of reshaping or obscuring earthworks across Ireland.
The site sits within a modern commercial forestry plantation, which limits visibility considerably and makes reading the monument on the ground a matter of patience. The low bank and fosse are easier to trace once your eyes adjust to looking for slight changes in level rather than obvious earthen walls.