Illaunaholata Moat, hachured, Newtown, Co. Limerick

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Castle Features

Illaunaholata Moat, hachured, Newtown, Co. Limerick

In the reclaimed pastures of Newtown, County Limerick, the remnants of Illaunaholata Moat tell a quiet story through cropmarks and old maps.

This levelled earthwork, sitting 35 metres south of the Raheen townland boundary, once formed an oval platform measuring roughly 18 metres north to south and 22 metres east to west. Though the physical structure has long since disappeared, aerial photographs and digital imagery reveal its ghostly outline in the fields, particularly visible in orthoimages taken between 2011 and 2013.

The site's history can be traced through Ordnance Survey Ireland's historic maps, where it first appears on the 1840 six-inch edition as an oval platform defined by a scarp. By the 1897 twenty-five inch map, cartographers had recorded it as a raised platform with the same dimensions we recognise today. The moat's proximity to other archaeological features adds to its significance; a barrow lies 60 metres to the northwest, whilst two enclosures sit 85 metres northwest and 55 metres southwest respectively.

What makes this site particularly interesting for researchers is how modern technology has revealed details invisible to the naked eye. Aerial photographs taken by Bord Gáis Éireann in November 1984 during gas pipeline surveys showed not just the rectangular cropmark of the levelled earthwork, but also linear cropmarks intersecting the site at multiple points. These aerial views, combined with Google Earth imagery, show the monument positioned immediately south of a relic watercourse that once ran east to west, suggesting this location was deliberately chosen for its relationship to the historical landscape and water access.

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