House - 17th century, Graystown, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
House
A shallow rectangular hollow in a grass-covered field in County Tipperary is easy to miss entirely.
Measuring roughly seven metres north to south and ten metres east to west, and sunk only about twenty centimetres below the surrounding ground, this depression marks the footprint of a 17th-century house at Graystown, its walls long gone but their outline still faintly legible as a low scarp in the turf.
The hollow sits within a broader landscape of vanished occupation. The field itself, composed of rock outcrop, was recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a Fair Green, a designation suggesting it once served as a gathering place for markets or fairs. Arranged across it are the grass-covered wall-footings of at least four other possible houses, along with what appears to be a central road running through the site, and two large roughly circular enclosures to the east that may represent old settlement plots or property divisions. The house in question sits at the north-east end of this field, with the medieval road running immediately to its east and two further house-footings to its south. Just to the south of the whole complex lies a tower house, a bawn (an enclosed courtyard associated with a defended residence), and an additional house structure, suggesting that Graystown was once a place of some local consequence, a small defended settlement with associated community infrastructure, now almost entirely absorbed back into the ground.