Ring-ditch, Tulla, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Ring-ditch, Tulla, Co. Tipperary

Beneath the improved pasture at Tulla in County Tipperary, a circle roughly eight metres across quietly refuses to be seen.

There is no mound, no depression, no visible trace at ground level. The only evidence of this feature comes from a single aerial photograph, where a circular mark in the soil gives it away to anyone who knows what they are looking for.

The feature is classed as a ring-ditch, a term used to describe a roughly circular ditched enclosure, often the eroded remnant of a prehistoric burial monument or the surrounding earthwork of a long-vanished structure. Such features are frequently invisible from the ground precisely because centuries of ploughing and agricultural improvement have levelled whatever once stood above the surface, leaving only the filled-in ditch below, where differences in soil chemistry or moisture produce a faint but legible mark when viewed from altitude. This particular ring-ditch does not appear on any edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, meaning it was either already buried and undetectable by the time those surveys were carried out, or simply escaped notice entirely. Its existence came to light only through aerial reconnaissance, specifically Ordnance Survey photograph 2351/0, which captured the circular crop or soil mark preserved within the gently rolling grassland.

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