Ringfort (Rath), Kilmoon, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
Inside a coniferous plantation in County Clare, a ringfort has been quietly disappearing.
It is not a dramatic collapse but a slow erasure: sections of its enclosing bank dug away from the north and north-northwest, conifers planted directly on top of the outer bank to the south, and brambles colonising what may once have been an entrance gap to the north-northeast. What survives is fragmentary but legible enough to read, if you know what you are looking at.
A rath is a type of ringfort typical of early medieval Ireland, usually a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and an outer ditch, and most likely used as a farmstead by a single family or small community. This example near Kilmoon sits near the top of a south-facing slope in the western corner of the plantation. It is subcircular in plan, measuring around 30 metres east to west and 28.5 metres north to south internally. The inner bank, where intact, stands nearly two metres high on its exterior face, with a flat-based fosse, or ditch, running around much of the circuit outside it. To the south, an outer bank can still be detected, adding a second line of enclosure that would once have made the site considerably more imposing. The 1920 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded the earthwork with hachures, the conventional marks used to indicate an earthen feature, suggesting it was still visible and reasonably well-defined a century ago. The interior is wet and undulating, sloping gently toward the northeast.
The plantation has not been kind to the site. Conifers planted over the outer bank have compressed and obscured it, and the gap in the inner bank at the north-northeast, though it might represent an original entrance, is now considered more likely the result of deliberate levelling at some later point. What remains offers a reasonable impression of the rath's original shape, but the finer detail has been lost to a combination of forestry, vegetation, and what looks like purposeful interference along the northern arc.