Ring-ditch, Breansha, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Ring-ditch, Breansha, Co. Tipperary

In a field in Breansha, County Tipperary, there is nothing to see.

That is precisely the point. Beneath a stretch of improved pasture on an otherwise south-west-facing slope, a pair of ring-ditches lies completely invisible at ground level, leaving no trace that anything was ever there at all.

Ring-ditches are circular or near-circular ditched enclosures, most often the remnants of prehistoric burial or ceremonial monuments. What the plough or the improver's drainage work has flattened above ground frequently survives as a soil mark or crop mark below, readable only from the air. The Breansha site was identified through exactly this method, spotted on an aerial photograph where slight differences in soil colour or vegetation growth betrayed the outline of two concentric or adjacent circular features. The field boundary that once lay to the west of the site, visible in that same photograph, has since been removed, meaning even that incidental landmark is now gone. The landscape has been quietly, incrementally tidied of its older layers.

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Pete F
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