Enclosure, Kilcommon More, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
In a gently rolling pasture in County Tipperary, a circular earthen bank sits quietly in the landscape, neither obviously ancient monument nor clearly ornamental feature, but something that occupies an uncertain space between the two.
The landowner calls it simply 'a grove', and that description is not wrong: large mature trees, identified as possibly Irish elm or sweet chestnut, grow around the bank's perimeter, with stumps still visible in the interior. It is the kind of place that prompts more questions than it answers.
The enclosure measures roughly 28.7 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west, defined by a bank of earth and stone about 3.2 metres wide at its base and rising just over a metre on its exterior face. Those modest but deliberate proportions suggest human intention, though the purpose remains open. A ringfort, the most common type of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically features exactly this kind of raised circular bank, sometimes accompanied by an external ditch or fosse. Here, no fosse is visible, which weakens that interpretation without ruling it out. The alternative reading is that the ring is a tree-ring, a deliberately planted circular grove of the kind occasionally laid out on Irish estates for ornamental or sheltering purposes. The southern section of the bank is the best preserved; a gap of about 2.4 metres in the western quadrant appears to be the result of erosion rather than an original entrance. A second enclosure sits around 164 metres to the north-east, raising the possibility, however tentative, that the two features share some relationship in origin or use.
What makes the site quietly compelling is precisely this ambiguity. It may be a domesticated version of a far older structure, a ringfort that a later landowner replanted and repurposed as a garden feature, smoothing over its history in the process. Or it may have been ornamental from the outset. The trees, the bank, and the label 'grove' sit together in the field without resolving the question.