Ringfort (Rath), Aughavinna, Co. Clare
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Ringforts
Two ringforts sharing a boundary wall is unusual enough to pause over.
At Aughavinna in County Clare, this subcircular rath sits in hilly pastureland and adjoins a second, slightly different rath immediately to its south, the inner bank of one merging directly into the outer bank of the other. It is the kind of arrangement that raises more questions than the landscape quietly answers, suggesting either deliberate planning or a long sequence of occupation and modification on the same ground.
A rath is an early medieval enclosed settlement, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches surrounding a circular or near-circular living space. This one at Aughavinna is more elaborate than most. The enclosure measures roughly 56.5 metres north to south and 45 metres east to west, with a level interior of about 36.5 by 35.5 metres. The main bank, over five metres wide at its base, is accompanied by an external fosse, the ditch dug to provide the material for the bank itself. To the north, two further banks survive with an intervening fosse between them, giving the site a multivallate character, meaning it was defended or defined by multiple concentric earthworks rather than a single ring. The middle and outer banks now survive only along the northern arc. A broad, poorly defined gap in the inner bank to the east-southeast may mark an original entrance, though the modern cattle gaps cut through the western and northern sections at several points have done their own quiet damage to the circuit. The site was already recorded on the Ordnance Survey 25-inch plan of 1897 and appeared again on the revised six-inch map of 1920, though it was listed only as an "Enclosure" in the Record of Monuments and Places as late as 1996. A field bank running east to west cuts across the southern interior, suggesting the land has been reorganised at some point since the rath fell out of use, and the outermost bank on the northern side may itself have been absorbed into a later field boundary rather than surviving purely as an original feature.