Enclosure, Glascurram, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Enclosures
There is a field in Glascurram, County Limerick, where the ground itself is the only surviving record of something that once mattered enough to build.
No walls remain, no stones protrude from the grass, and a visitor walking the site today would likely see nothing more than a slight unevenness underfoot and a modern field boundary cutting through the middle. Yet aerial imagery tells a different story, one of a sizeable circular enclosure that has been quietly disappearing from the landscape for well over a century.
The monument was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840 as a raised, sub-circular area defined by a scarp, which in archaeological terms means a slope or steep edge formed by the gradual build-up of material, often the eroded remnant of an earthen bank. A ruined rectangular building was noted immediately to the south at that time. By the 1897 OS twenty-five-inch map, the site was recorded as a raised circular area with an internal diameter of approximately 47 metres and an external diameter of approximately 53 metres, still defined by its scarp. Enclosures of this kind are common features of the Irish early medieval landscape, typically serving as farmsteads, ecclesiastical sites, or focal points for local settlement, though in this case no specific function has been established. What is clear is that the levelling continued after 1897. Digital Globe orthophotos taken between 2011 and 2013 showed the northern half of the monument still legible from the air, and a Google Earth image from 2019 captured traces of the same northern arc alongside what appears to be field clearance material piled at the centre of the site and a field boundary running east to west through it. The record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded in June 2020.
The site lies in grassland approximately 150 metres east of a public road, close to the townland boundary with Kilcolman to the south. There is nothing on the ground to mark it, and no surface remains are visible. The clearest way to appreciate what once stood here is through the aerial images referenced in the survey record, where the curvature of the northern half is still just readable against the surrounding field pattern. If the site is visited in person, low winter light and damp conditions after rain can occasionally bring slight earthwork traces into relief, though the extensive levelling means expectations should be modest.