Enclosure, Knockanacree, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Knockanacree, Co. Tipperary

At Knockanacree in County Tipperary, a circular enclosure sits quietly in the rolling pastureland, largely erased but not entirely gone.

The site measures roughly 38.2 metres across on its northwest to southeast axis, and although it has been levelled over time, the ghost of a curving bank still traces part of its original circuit. At the south and north, that bank remains just legible: about six and a half metres wide, rising less than half a metre above the interior and fractionally less on the outer face. It is the kind of feature that rewards patience and a low sun.

Enclosures of this kind are scattered across the Irish landscape, and most are thought to date broadly to the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, though without excavation a precise date is difficult to assign. They range from the substantial ringforts that enclosed farmsteads and their associated structures to smaller or more ambiguous earthworks whose original function is less certain. At Knockanacree, the situation is further complicated by a modern field boundary that cuts directly across the site on a northwest to southeast line, and by the way the interior tilts down toward the west, suggesting the ground here was never entirely level. A companion earthwork site lies immediately to the east, which raises the possibility that the two features were related in some way, though what that relationship might have been is not recorded.

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Pete F
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