Fish-pond, Garrynagree, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Estate Features
Tucked into the north corner of a medieval moated site on the upland grasslands of Garrynagree in County Tipperary, there is a small, square, perpetually wet enclosure that local knowledge has long identified as a fish-pond.
What makes it quietly peculiar is the engineering logic still visible in the ground: while the moated site around it stays relatively dry, this inner enclosure appears to have been deliberately designed to hold water, its arrangement of banks and fosse working to keep moisture in rather than drain it away.
The enclosure measures roughly 22 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, bounded by a flat-topped earthen bank and an outer fosse, which is essentially a water-filled ditch. A moated site, for context, is typically a medieval farmstead or manor surrounded by a wet or dry ditch, common in Ireland from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries onwards. Here, that broader moated enclosure sits on a south-east-facing slope with open views to the south and east, with a ringfort lying about 400 metres to the north, suggesting the area has been shaped by human activity across several different periods. A stream runs past the fish-pond from the south-west, and several springs beneath the interior, according to local tradition, keep the ground wet throughout the year regardless of season. The banks and fosse survive well along the north-east and north-west sides, though elsewhere the bank has been absorbed into a field boundary and part of the fosse filled in. There is no visible entrance feature, which is itself a small puzzle.
The site sits on wet ground on a SE-facing slope, and the interior, particularly along its southern, downslope side, remains noticeably waterlogged. The well-preserved sections of the bank, with a flat top about one and a half metres wide and a base of three metres, give a reasonable impression of the original structure despite the alterations elsewhere on the perimeter.