Enclosure, Killeedy South, Co. Limerick

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Killeedy South, Co. Limerick

In a field of level marshy pasture in south County Limerick, a barely legible arc of earthwork curves through the ground, hinting at something that was once a complete and deliberate circle.

The interior is now completely waterlogged, the surrounding land has been subjected to significant earthmoving and excavation over the years, and what survives is fragmentary at best. That so little remains above ground is precisely what makes it interesting: the site asks the observer to do a good deal of imaginative reconstruction.

The enclosure is recorded on the 1924 Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a circular earthwork approximately thirty metres in diameter. Enclosures of this general type, which in Ireland often take the form of a raised bank and ditch defining a circular or near-circular area, were built across a broad sweep of prehistory and the early medieval period, and were put to a wide variety of uses, from settlement and farming to ritual and burial. Without excavation it is rarely possible to say which purpose applied to any given example. What the 1924 map preserves, at least, is a record of the monument before the earthmoving activity that has since disturbed much of the area. The site was compiled for the archaeological record by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011.

A low, curving earthen bank running roughly from the north-west to the north-east is the most legible surviving feature, and even this requires a careful eye to distinguish from the general undulation of the pasture. The marshy conditions of the surrounding land mean the site is best approached in drier periods, though the waterlogged interior is unlikely to improve whatever the season. Visitors should expect a working agricultural landscape rather than a managed or interpreted site, and should be prepared for ground underfoot that reflects the same dampness that has helped obscure the monument over time. The value here is partly in the reading of absence, in understanding how thoroughly a once-mapped structure can recede into its surroundings within a century.

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Pete F
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