Enclosure, Newcastle, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Newcastle, Co. Tipperary

On a north-facing slope in County Tipperary, a large earthwork enclosure sits in open meadow, barely legible against the grass.

What makes it quietly puzzling is not what remains but what the maps disagree about. The first Ordnance Survey edition, surveyed around 1840, recorded it as a large irregular hexagon, while later mapping describes something closer to a circle, roughly 70 metres across from north to south and 66 metres east to west. Whether this reflects genuine reinterpretation of the same earthwork or changes to the site over time is difficult to say, but the discrepancy alone suggests a monument that has never sat still in the record.

Today, the enclosure has been almost entirely levelled. The only visible evidence above ground is a slight scarp, a low step in the land surface no more than 0.4 metres high, surviving in the north-east quadrant and curving northward for roughly 15 to 20 metres. At its base there is a shallow depression that may represent the ghost of a fosse, the kind of external ditch that would once have defined the enclosure's perimeter; it measures approximately 2 metres wide but barely 0.1 metres deep, more a suggestion than a feature. The southern side of the enclosure has left no visible trace whatsoever. Enclosures of this size in the Irish landscape are frequently associated with early medieval settlement, ringforts being the most familiar category, though without excavation it is impossible to assign this one a function or a date with any confidence.

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Pete F
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