Enclosure, Graniera, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Graniera, Co. Tipperary

In the rough upland pasture of Graniera, a circular earthwork sits quietly in a landscape that most people pass without a second thought.

The enclosure measures roughly 28 metres north to south and 29 metres east to west, making it broadly comparable in scale to the ring forts, or raths, that dot the Irish countryside, though no formal classification has yet been attached to this particular example. What makes its situation slightly unusual is the manner of its discovery: it was not found during a ground survey or an excavation, but identified from aerial satellite imagery.

The site appears to be defined by a combination of scarp, fosse, and outer bank. A scarp is a steep slope or near-vertical face cut into the earth; a fosse is a ditch, typically dug as part of a defensive or enclosing boundary; and together with an outer bank they form the classic layered profile of an earthen enclosure of the kind built across Ireland from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period, though the age of this particular structure is not yet established. It was spotted and reported by Jean-Charles Caillère, whose identification brought the feature to wider attention in 2018 and 2019. Beyond those bare facts, the enclosure remains largely unexamined, its purpose and date still open questions sitting in a field of rough grass on a Tipperary hillside.

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