Bawn, Clonamondra, Co. Tipperary South
On the flat grasslands near Clonamondra Cottage in County Tipperary South, the remains of a circular medieval enclosure tell a story of centuries of use and reuse.
Bawn, Clonamondra, Co. Tipperary South
The site consists of a 26-metre-wide circular area surrounded by what was once an impressive defensive system: an inner earth and stone bank, a fosse (defensive ditch), and an outer bank. Today, only the northern sections remain well preserved, with the inner bank standing about a metre high on the interior side. The southern portions have been less fortunate; a modern roadway to the cottage cuts straight through, and the outer defences have been completely destroyed along this section.
What makes this site particularly intriguing are the wall footings of a long rectangular building that run northwest to southeast along the inner face of the bank. These stone foundations could represent either an early medieval hall or a later fortified house, with the circular enclosure serving as its bailey or bawn; essentially a defended courtyard. The Ordnance Survey maps from the 19th century depicted a mound within the enclosure, which may have been the grassed-over rubble from this collapsed building before some bulldozing work partially cleared the site.
The enclosure has clearly seen better days, with a quarry spoil heap now occupying the southern quadrant and no clear original entrance visible, though a modern 5-metre gap has been created in the southeast section. Despite these alterations and the passage of time, the site remains an evocative reminder of medieval defensive architecture, where the practical needs of defence merged with domestic life in rural Ireland.