Enclosure, Knockainy West, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Enclosures
For most of its documented existence, this enclosure in Knockainy West existed only as a blank space on the map, quite literally.
The Ordnance Survey's historic maps passed over it entirely, recording the ground here as nothing more than an area of rock outcrop on the 1897 edition of the 25-inch OS map. The enclosure went unrecognised as a monument until aerial photography changed what could be seen from above, revealing a shape in the landscape that no ground-level survey had thought to record.
The site was identified during the Bruff aerial photographic survey in 1986, when the image catalogued as Bruff 253 (AP 5/2073) picked out a rectilinear enclosure open to the south. An enclosure of this type is, broadly speaking, an area defined by an earthen or stone bank, the function of which can vary considerably, from agricultural use to settlement to ritual purposes. What gives this particular example its quiet complexity is its position in the landscape. It sits in rough pasture approximately 255 metres northeast of the townland boundary with Correenfeeradda, and it is flanked by two cashels, stone-walled enclosures of early medieval origin, one lying just 25 metres to the south and another 45 metres to the north. The enclosure itself measures roughly 42 metres east to west and 25 metres north to south, its defining bank visible on Digital Globe orthoimagery taken between 2011 and 2013, and again confirmed on a Google Earth image dated 25 March 2017. The record was compiled by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly and uploaded in November 2020.
The site sits in working rough pasture and is not formally managed or signposted. The enclosure's bank is partially obscured by intermittent scrub, which means the clearest sense of its outline comes not from standing within the field but from aerial or satellite imagery. Visitors approaching from the surrounding road network should be aware that the townland boundary with Correenfeenadda offers a loose navigational reference point, with the monument lying to the northeast of that line. Late winter or early spring, before scrub leafs out fully, would offer the best conditions for making out the bank on the ground. The two cashels to the north and south are the more immediately legible features; the enclosure between them rewards patience and a close reading of the terrain.