Enclosure, Inchnamuck, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Inchnamuck, Co. Tipperary

On a steep, roughly circular hill in County Tipperary, an ancient enclosure sits half-consumed by thicket.

Most visitors to the area would pass it without a second glance, and even those who sought it out would find only fragments: a low earthen scarp on the southern side, a natural rock terrace to the north, and, for two full quadrants of the compass, nothing visible at all above ground.

The site is mapped as a roughly oval enclosure, measuring approximately 27 metres north to south and 37 metres east to west, which places it in the modest range typical of early Irish enclosed settlements or hilltop ceremonial sites. An enclosure of this kind, a defined boundary of earth or stone around an elevated summit, could have served any number of purposes across the long span of Irish prehistory and early medieval life, from a defended homestead to a ritual space. What survives on the southern side is a low earthen scarp, just 0.4 metres high and running for 18 metres. The northern boundary is formed not by any built feature but by the natural rock outcrop itself, which drops away by 0.75 metres and creates a terrace some 17 metres long. The builders, whoever they were, appear to have incorporated the landscape rather than working against it. The enclosure appeared on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840 and again on the revised edition of 1907, which tells us at least that it was still legible in the landscape at both those moments, before the thicket closed in further.

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Pete F
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