Enclosure, Grange More, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
At Grange More in County Tipperary, a barely perceptible rise in a flat grass field is almost all that remains of what was once an enclosed settlement.
The ground lifts by just twenty centimetres across a roughly circular area some twenty metres across, north to south and east to west. Without knowing what to look for, most people would walk straight across it without a second thought.
The site is a levelled enclosure, a category of monument common throughout Ireland, typically consisting of a circular or sub-circular earthwork that once defined a farmstead or small settlement, bounded by a raised bank and sometimes a ditch. Over centuries of agricultural use, such enclosures are frequently ploughed down or otherwise reduced until only the faintest trace survives in the topography. At Grange More, the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840 still shows this feature as a legible small enclosure, which means the levelling has occurred largely in the intervening period. The surrounding grassland is open and flat, with a small stream running roughly twenty metres to the south-east, and the site commands clear views in all directions, a quality that would not have been incidental to whoever originally chose this spot.