Ringfort (Rath), Lisballyfroot, Co. Kilkenny

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lisballyfroot, Co. Kilkenny

Attached to the eastern side of this early medieval ringfort at Lisballyfroot, and separated from it by a fosse, sits a square enclosure measuring eleven metres by eleven metres.

That combination, a circular rath alongside a rectilinear annexe, is an unusual arrangement, and the geometry alone makes this a site worth pausing over. A ringfort, to give the basic description, is a roughly circular enclosed settlement dating typically from the early medieval period, defined by an earthen bank and, in many cases, a surrounding ditch or fosse. They are common across Ireland, but this pairing of round and square is less so.

The main enclosure has an internal diameter of twenty-two metres, and its defining bank is still traceable at about forty centimetres high and a metre or so wide. The external fosse, the drainage and defensive ditch ringing the bank, survives at a shallow depth of around thirty centimetres for much of its circuit, though at the southern side it has been recut and pressed into service as the fosse of a later field boundary, the earlier archaeology quietly absorbed into the working landscape of a later era. The interior is overgrown and uneven underfoot, a hummocky surface that may indicate past quarrying within the enclosure. The site sits on a slight south-westerly facing slope with a commanding field of view across much of its surroundings, with only the north-east obscured, which is roughly consistent with the practical logic of early medieval settlement placement.

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