Enclosure, Lowesgreen, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
In the pasture at Lowesgreen, a large irregular earthwork sits quietly in a field, its origins unrecorded in any historical document, its purpose unconfirmed.
What makes it quietly anomalous is its scale and its relationship with a neighbour: this is not a lone structure but one half of a paired arrangement, two enclosures sharing a boundary and, apparently, a fosse, the term used for the ditches cut around such earthworks to reinforce their banks and define their limits.
The enclosure measures roughly 25 metres north to south and 72 metres east to west, an irregular shape defined by an earth and stone bank that still stands to an internal height of about 1.1 metres and an external height of nearly 1.9 metres. At its widest, the bank is over eight metres across, though it has been worn to a simple scarp in places. Around the outer edge, a fosse roughly six and a half metres wide and nearly a metre deep runs from the south-west, around the west and north, and back to the north-north-east and south-east. To the south, a second, slightly wider fosse is shared with the adjoining enclosure. The interior is level. It was identified during a field inspection in January 2007, meaning it had no formal recorded existence before that date, despite sitting in open pasture on a gentle south-facing slope, visible to anyone who looked carefully at the ground beneath their feet.