Enclosure, Raheen (Coshma By.), Co. Limerick

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Raheen (Coshma By.), Co. Limerick

An oval outline, roughly 32.

5 metres east to west and 22 metres north to south, lies buried beneath a patch of young forestry in the townland of Raheen, in County Limerick's Coshma barony. No trace of it appears on any of the Ordnance Survey's historic maps, and it is entirely invisible at ground level. What reveals its existence is a cropmark, the faint differential in how vegetation grows over buried archaeological features, which shows up clearly from the air. It is, in a sense, a monument that can only be read from above.

The enclosure first came to light during the Bruff aerial photographic survey in 1986, recorded in frame AP 4/3601 of that survey. Since then, the oval cropmark has been confirmed independently on three further sets of aerial and satellite imagery: Ordnance Survey Ireland orthoimages taken between 2005 and 2012, a Digital Globe orthoimage from 2011 to 2013, and a Google Earth image captured on 16 March 2016. The consistency of the mark across these sources strengthens the case that something substantial lies below the surface, though what precisely it was built for and when remain open questions. What the notes do make clear is that this is not an isolated anomaly in the landscape. Related earthworks sit 50 metres to both the north-east and west-north-west, and a separate enclosure lies just 90 metres to the north-west, suggesting a cluster of activity in this corner of Raheen. A small watercourse 22 metres to the east, which also marks the boundary with the neighbouring townland of Grange, adds a detail that would have mattered practically to whoever once used this ground. Lough Gur, one of the most archaeologically significant lake landscapes in Ireland, lies just 1.2 kilometres to the east-south-east.

For anyone interested in visiting the broader area, the monument itself offers nothing visible at ground level; the young forestry that now covers it provides no obvious point of reference. The value of the site, at present, lies in its position within a wider constellation of earthworks and enclosures that populate this part of Limerick, most of them similarly unassuming on foot. Lough Gur, close by, has a visitor centre and interpretive material that helps contextualise the kind of enclosed settlement activity that aerial survey has continued to find scattered across the surrounding townlands. The compiled record, uploaded to the national monuments database in November 2020 by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly, serves as the most detailed account currently available.

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Pete F
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