Settlement deserted - medieval, Ballybronoge, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Settlement Sites
A children's burial ground sits in a field in Ballybronoge, County Limerick, and that alone is enough to pause the eye.
But the ground around it is doing something equally quiet and more spatially complex: it is the ghost of a medieval settlement, expressed in low earthen banks, rectangular enclosures, and faint undulations that spread across the greater part of the field. The banks rarely rise more than half a metre above the pasture, and from ground level they read more as gentle rolls in the turf than as the boundaries of houses and paddocks. Seen from above, in aerial imagery, the geometry sharpens considerably.
The site was first formally recorded in 1990, when archaeologist Celie O'Rahilly visited during fieldwork associated with the proposed N20 road corridor. She described what she found as a complex of earthen and stone linear mounds, some appearing to be boundaries and some possibly structural, extending across the field to the north and west of the children's burial ground. That burial ground, known as Killasragh, is a cillín, a type of unconsecrated ground traditionally used for the interment of unbaptised infants and others excluded from churchyard burial, and its presence beside the settlement earthworks is not unusual; medieval communities often placed such spaces at the edges of inhabited land. Excavations carried out 50 metres to the east, on the N20 route itself, uncovered a related enclosure, trackway, and field system. By 2000, a more detailed survey had identified three principal features: a main rectangular enclosure measuring roughly 36.5 metres north to south and 22 metres east to west, with a smaller annexe immediately to its north; a field system of three parallel banks to the north, merging at the eastern end into an elongated enclosure; and a partial L-shaped bank to the northeast of the burial ground, which may represent either a further enclosure or a remnant field boundary. A possible medieval road runs to the west of the complex. The full extent of the earthworks, including features to the west, south, and east, is visible on Ordnance Survey Ireland orthoimages from 2005 to 2012 and on Digital Globe photography from 2011 to 2013.
The site lies in pasture on a slight west-facing slope, immediately west of the townland boundary with Attyflin. Access is across working farmland, so the usual courtesies apply. The banks are subtle enough that a dry spell, when shadows are longer and grass growth lower, makes the topography easier to read. Cross-referencing a visit with the freely available OSi aerial imagery beforehand gives a useful sense of the layout, since the rectangular paddocks and enclosures resolve much more clearly from above than they do underfoot. The sketch plan drawn by Mark Keegan as part of the 2000 survey, compiled in the record by Fiona Rooney, remains the clearest guide to the three principal features and their spatial relationships.