Enclosure, Knockadromin, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
Some archaeological sites announce themselves with earthen banks and visible stonework.
This one at Knockadromin in County Tipperary does neither. The outline of what may be a circular enclosure, the kind of enclosed settlement that was commonplace in early medieval Ireland, exists here only as a crop mark visible from the air. At ground level, the pasture gives nothing away, and even that pasture has since been overtaken by forestry planting, obscuring the landscape further still.
The site came to light through aerial photography, with an image catalogued under the reference R 84/85 in the Geological Survey of Ireland's aerial photograph collection capturing the faint circular outline pressed into the flat upland ground. Circular enclosures of this type were typically formed by a bank and ditch ringing a domestic or agricultural space, and they survive in their thousands across Ireland, though many, like this one, have been levelled by centuries of farming or simply absorbed back into the land. What lends the Knockadromin site a small additional interest is its proximity to a separate earthwork to the east, suggesting that this upland area, now quiet and largely planted over, may once have seen sustained use across a considerable period.
