Enclosure, Rathcloheen, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
On an east-facing slope in County Tipperary, a nearly circular earthwork sits quietly among tillage fields, its low bank still clearly readable in the landscape after what is likely well over a thousand years.
The enclosure at Rathcloheen measures roughly 46 metres on its northeast-to-southwest axis and 44 metres across, making it a substantial feature, yet the bank itself rises only about 0.95 metres on its outer face. That modest scale is not unusual for this type of monument. Enclosures of this kind, sometimes associated with early medieval settlement or with the boundaries of a ringfort, a farmstead type common across Ireland between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, were built to define and demarcate rather than to fortify in any serious military sense.
What gives this particular enclosure a quiet specificity is its entrance. Positioned at the east-southeast, it is five metres wide and flanked on each side by a rectangular limestone slab. The eastern stone, just under two metres long, remains standing in its original position. The western stone has tilted inward, leaning into the passageway, and there appear to be packing stones still visible around its base, the small wedging material used to keep upright stones seated firmly in the ground. The fact that both stones survive at all, in a field under active cultivation, is noteworthy. The interior of the enclosure slopes gently to the southeast and is currently ungrazed. A second enclosure lies approximately 20 metres to the north, suggesting this part of the slope may once have seen more structured activity than the present agricultural landscape implies. The Galtee Mountains are visible to the south from this elevated position, a view that would have oriented anyone working or living within the enclosure just as clearly in the early medieval period as it does now.