Enclosure, Tyone, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Tyone, Co. Tipperary

On an east-facing slope in the quiet pastureland of Tyone, something circular and old has been almost entirely swallowed by the ground.

Almost, but not quite. The enclosure here has been levelled to the point where most visitors would walk straight across it without pausing, yet the land itself refuses to let the thing disappear. A ring of darker grass, roughly 26.6 metres north to south and 26.2 metres east to west, marks the circumference of whatever once stood here, the soil beneath still behaving differently from the surrounding field, centuries after the structure above it was lost.

One portion of the original bank survives at the northern edge, worn down but measurable: about 2.7 metres wide, rising just under 30 centimetres on the interior side and nearly 1.75 metres on the exterior. That difference in height matters. An enclosure of this kind, a roughly circular earthwork defined by a raised bank and likely an accompanying ditch, would have served any number of purposes in early medieval Ireland, from a defended farmstead or ringfort to a ceremonial or pastoral boundary. The surviving bank dimensions suggest something that was once substantial enough to define and protect a space, even if the centuries have done their best to reduce it to a shadow in the grass.

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Pete F
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