Enclosure, Tullohea, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Enclosures
A road now cuts through what was once a continuous earthwork complex in the Tipperary pastureland of Tullohea, quietly dividing two enclosures that the 1840 Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded as adjoining.
By the time the 1904 edition was published, a road running east to west had inserted itself between them, and the southern enclosure became a separate feature. What remains at the northern site is a low, slightly flattened oval of ground, roughly 30 metres north to south and 34 metres east to west in its overall extent, still faintly legible in the grass if the light or the season cooperates.
The earthwork shows what surveyors describe as two possible phases of construction, meaning the site was likely modified or extended at some point rather than built in a single effort. The earlier phase appears to be a sub-circular area roughly 22 metres by 26 metres, defined by the remnants of a low earthen bank and an accompanying fosse, which is the term for a ditch dug to reinforce or protect an enclosure. That original bank and fosse are partially cut across by a later, more substantial earth and stone bank, suggesting that someone at some point decided the original boundary needed reworking or enlarging. The later bank survives to between 0.6 and 1.1 metres on its interior face and up to 1.5 metres externally, making it the more prominent feature visible today. An external fosse associated with this second phase has been largely filled in along part of its circuit, most probably because of a trackway that appears on the later OS mapping. Inside the enclosure, the ground is generally level, though a shallow depression measuring roughly 4.5 metres by 3.3 metres sits within the north-west quadrant, its purpose unrecorded.
