Ringfort, Ballaghcloneen, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Ringforts
At Ballaghcloneen in County Kilkenny, a ringfort that once measured roughly 43 metres across has been so thoroughly levelled that nothing of it remains visible on the ground.
Ringforts, the most common monument type in the Irish countryside, were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, their interiors protected by one or more earthen banks and an outer fosse, a defensive ditch. This one has been erased entirely, absorbed into the working farmland around it.
The site was recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839 as a roughly circular enclosure, with a field boundary running north to south along its western side and tracing part of its south-western edge before turning southward. That boundary suggests the old ringfort bank was still functioning as a field division when the surveyors passed through, which was not unusual; farmers often repurposed the earthworks for centuries after their original use had ended. The 1900 revision of the same mapping shows the enclosure still present, meaning its destruction came at some point in the twentieth century. What survives now is legible only from the air: on satellite imagery captured in June 2008, the fosse shows up as a cropmark, a faint circular shadow in the vegetation caused by the differential growth of crops over the filled-in ditch below.