Enclosure, Glengoole, Co. Tipperary

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Glengoole, Co. Tipperary

On an east-west ridge above Glengoole in County Tipperary, there is a site that exists more convincingly from the air than it does underfoot.

A ringfort occupies the western end of the ridge, set in open grassland with clear views in every direction, the kind of elevated position that early medieval farmers and their families chose deliberately, for both practical oversight of their land and a degree of natural defence. A ringfort, broadly speaking, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, used in Ireland from around the early centuries AD through to the Norman period as a farmstead or defended homestead. This one is unremarkable enough at ground level, but aerial photography tells a different story.

A Geological Survey of Ireland photograph taken in 1974 reveals a second, smaller enclosure sitting within the south-eastern quadrant of the ringfort, measuring approximately 37 metres north to south and 31 metres east to west. Whether it is earlier, later, or contemporary with the outer ringfort is not established, but the fact that it is entirely invisible on the ground makes it one of those features that exists, for most practical purposes, only as a shadow caught in the right light from altitude. Some 45 metres to the west lies a levelled stone circle, now flattened but still recorded, which suggests this ridge was a place of significance across a very considerable stretch of human activity, from prehistoric ritual use through to early medieval settlement.

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