Enclosure, Kilross, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Kilross, Co. Tipperary

A road cuts through the middle of this ancient enclosure near Kilross in County Tipperary, and most drivers travelling the R662 between Galbally and Tipperary town would have no idea they were crossing it.

North of the road, the monument simply disappears from view at ground level, its northern half swallowed by tarmac, hedgerow, and a shallow drain. What survives to the south is enough to read, but only if you know what you are looking for.

The site was identified during field survey by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly on 20 January 2009, at the base of a north-west-facing slope in improved pasture, immediately east of a small pond. An enclosure of this type would originally have been defined by a combination of a scarp, a raised or cut earthen bank, and a fosse, the ditch that typically runs alongside it. Here, the surviving southern arc shows a scarp roughly 6.35 metres wide and 1.5 metres high, with an accompanying fosse nearly 11 metres across in total, though shallow at only 0.2 metres deep. The pond itself serves as the eastern boundary, suggesting the original builders made deliberate use of the waterlogged ground. That low-lying character persists: the base of the scarp remains waterlogged in the south-west sector, and a broad drainage channel crossing the field still runs into the pond. A dumped mound of soil, now grassed over, sits in the fosse to the south, and cattle have worn away part of the scarp on the south-east side, the quiet, incremental damage that affects many unprotected earthworks in working farmland.

The interior, what can be seen of it, is relatively even and grass-covered, sloping gently toward the north-east. The semi-circular plan, roughly 14 metres north-north-west to south-south-east and 24 metres east to west, is consistent with the kind of enclosed settlement or farmstead that was common across Ireland from the early medieval period onward, though no dating evidence is noted for this particular site. Its partial survival, bisected by a modern road and hemmed in by agricultural activity on all sides, makes it a quietly instructive example of how much of the Irish archaeological landscape persists only in fragments, visible in one field but already gone in the next.

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Pete F
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