Enclosure, Inchacoomb, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Enclosures
An oval earthwork in upland pasture, partially swallowed by trees and bisected by two later field boundaries, is easy to overlook on a map and easier still to walk past in the field.
This small enclosure in the townland of Inchacoomb, on the western fringe of the Galtee Mountains in County Limerick, measures roughly 18 metres on its longer axis and sits close to a watercourse marking the boundary with the neighbouring townland of Baurnagurrahy. What makes it quietly curious is the gap in the historical record: the first Ordnance Survey mapping of Ireland, the six-inch series published in 1840, shows no trace of it. It only appears on the later 25-inch edition from 1897, depicted as a raised oval platform defined by a scarp, a steep-edged bank, along its southern and western sides, with an external fosse, essentially a ditch, running from the west around to the north.
The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp, who documented a remarkable range of Irish earthworks in the early twentieth century, recorded the site in 1919 and described it as a conjoined fort, suggesting it was once understood to be connected with the enclosure immediately to its south. Earthworks of this kind, whether ringforts or their less clearly defined cousins, were typically built during the early medieval period as enclosed farmsteads or places of refuge, though without excavation it is impossible to say precisely what function this particular example served or when it was constructed. Its absence from the 1840 survey may mean the raised ground was less legible then, or simply that the surveyor did not consider it significant enough to mark.
The site sits in upland grazing land, which means access depends on landowner permission and the usual courtesies of the Irish countryside. Tree cover, visible on Google Earth aerial imagery, now obscures much of the earthwork from ground level, and the two field boundaries that cut across it at the north and south-east have further altered its outline over the decades. Anyone seeking it out should come with the 1897 25-inch Ordnance Survey sheet as a reference, cross-checked against modern satellite imagery, since the scarp and fosse are subtle features that reward patient observation rather than a quick glance.