Enclosure, Gorteeshal, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
Beneath a lush meadow in Gorteeshal, Co. Tipperary, there is an enclosure that cannot be seen.
No earthwork rises above the grass, no stones break the surface, no hollow in the ground suggests that anything lies below. The only evidence of its existence is a photograph taken from the air.
The site was identified through a cropmark, a phenomenon in which buried archaeological features, walls, ditches, filled pits, influence the growth of crops or grass above them in ways that become visible from altitude, particularly in dry summers when differential soil moisture causes revealing patterns of discolouration or uneven growth. In this case, aerial photography from the Air Corps, reference 2230/1, captured a roughly circular cropmark on a gently south-facing slope, on land that grades gradually towards a valley floor. The circular shape is consistent with an enclosure, a broad category of monument in Ireland that ranges from prehistoric ringforts to early medieval farmsteads, typically defined by a surrounding bank, ditch, or wall. What purpose this particular enclosure served, and when it was in use, cannot be said on current evidence.
There is nothing for a visitor to observe at ground level. The meadow gives no indication of what the aerial photograph revealed, and the enclosure remains entirely a feature of the subsoil.