Enclosure, Fethard, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
Near Fethard in County Tipperary, a circular enclosure roughly seventy metres across lies invisible at ground level, detectable only from the air, where the buried outline of a fosse and the ghost traces of concentric banks emerge as cropmarks in the fields above.
A fosse is simply a ditch, typically dug as part of a defensive or boundary arrangement, and here its presence is betrayed not by any standing earthwork but by differences in how the crops above it grow, their roots responding to the disturbed or moister soil of the ancient cut.
The enclosure was identified through aerial photography, specifically an image catalogued as GB89.Z.36, which revealed not only the main ditch but also negative cropmarks indicating concentric internal and external banks, suggesting a more elaborate arrangement than a simple single-ring enclosure. Cropmarks of this kind are a standard tool of landscape archaeology, recording what the surface itself no longer shows. Circular enclosures of this general type are known across Ireland in considerable numbers, and though their dates and functions vary widely, ranging from prehistoric settlements to early medieval ringforts, the concentric arrangement here hints at something designed with particular care for demarcation or defence. Without excavation, the precise date and purpose of this particular site remain open questions.