Enclosure, Fethard, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
On the ground near Fethard in County Tipperary, there is nothing obviously remarkable to see.
No earthwork rises above the field surface, no stones mark a boundary, and nothing interrupts the ordinary rhythm of farmland. What exists here is visible only from the air, and only under the right conditions: a cropmark, that faint but revealing discolouration that appears in growing cereals or grasses when buried features beneath the soil cause the plants above them to ripen or stress at slightly different rates. It is one of archaeology's quieter forms of evidence, and easy to overlook.
An aerial photograph, reference GB89.AC.03, captured the outline of a curvilinear enclosure roughly fifty metres across, its shape defined by a fosse, which is a ditch dug to demarcate or defend a space, with the spoil often thrown inward to form a bank. A second, smaller circular enclosure sits immediately to the north of it. Enclosures of this kind are common across Ireland, ranging in date from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period, and their purposes varied considerably: some were farmsteads, some ceremonial, and some served both functions at different points in their long histories. The pairing of two enclosures in close proximity is not unusual and may reflect the expansion of a settlement, a division of domestic and agricultural space, or simply two separate phases of occupation on the same ground.