Field system, Tankardstown, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Tankardstown, Co. Limerick

On the ground, there is nothing obviously remarkable about this stretch of reclaimed pasture on the eastern edge of the Tankardstown townland boundary in County Limerick.

No earthworks interrupt the grass, no stones protrude, and the site does not appear on Ordnance Survey Ireland's historic maps at any scale. What exists here is, in a sense, an absence made visible only from the air, and even then only under the right conditions.

The site came to light not through archaeological fieldwork but through a pipeline. When Bord Gáis Éireann was routing the Curraleigh West to Limerick gas pipeline in the early 1980s, aerial photographs were taken along the corridor at a scale of 1:5000. One frame, captured on 3 November 1984 and catalogued as BGE 1/5000 2552, showed linear cropmarks crossing the pasture. Cropmarks of this kind appear when buried features, such as old ditches or walls, affect the moisture and nutrient content of the soil above them, causing overlying crops or grasses to grow at a slightly different rate or colour. At first glance the marks suggested the outline of a pre-1700 field system, which would have been a significant find. Further analysis, however, concluded that the linear patterns represent the remains of drainage channels rather than ancient field boundaries, placing the features well outside the threshold that would qualify them as a scheduled historic field system. The site is nonetheless recorded as Site No. 040238 and sits in close proximity to a cluster of possible barrows, the low circular mounds that typically mark prehistoric burial sites, recorded separately under the reference LI040-055002/006. Whether those adjacent features are genuinely ancient remains an open question.

Because the diagnostic features here are subsurface and not visible to the naked eye at ground level, there is little for a casual visitor to observe directly. The aerial photographs held in the pipeline survey archive, and comparative imagery available through Google Earth, are the practical means of engaging with this site. Anyone with a serious interest in cropmark archaeology or in the relationship between infrastructure projects and incidental heritage discovery would find the record, compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded to the national monuments database in May 2021, a useful starting point. The nearby possible barrows are worth noting on any visit to the general area, though access to the surrounding farmland would require landowner permission.

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