Enclosure, Loughlohery, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
On a gently sloping hillside in south Tipperary, a roughly circular enclosure has been so thoroughly swallowed by roads, gardens, and undergrowth that it is now almost impossible to detect.
Enclosures of this kind, often circular earthworks that once defined a farmstead or settlement, are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, yet this one at Loughlohery has been reduced to little more than a smudge in the landscape, marked mainly by dumped stone along the edge of a scrubby grove and disturbed ground beneath a tangle of conifers, brambles, and nettles.
The second edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map, surveyed in 1904 to 1905, still showed the enclosure clearly enough, though even then it had been clipped: a field boundary running east to west had cut across the northern quadrant, and another running northeast to southwest had truncated the south. What followed was a cumulative series of alterations that erased much of what remained. A public road was later built running east to west before turning sharply northward, its right-angle bend coinciding almost exactly with the enclosure's eastern edge. A bungalow and garden were then constructed immediately to the northeast, further disturbing the interior. A private roadway to a cottage passes the southwestern quadrant. The enclosure now sits at the elbow of that road junction, hemmed in on multiple sides and largely unrecognisable as a monument at all.