Ringfort (Rath), Killeen, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Ringforts
What is unusual about this rath in north County Tipperary is not its size or its age but the way water has shaped its survival.
Most ringforts, the circular enclosed farmsteads that dot the Irish countryside in their thousands and date broadly to the early medieval period, are found on dry, elevated ground where the earthworks remain legible and the interior serviceable. This one sits on a gentle rise in a river valley, with a stream running to the north-east and drainage gullies cutting across the ground immediately to the south-east. The surrounding field is persistently wet, and the fosse, the defensive ditch that encircles the outer edge of the bank, remains waterlogged. That waterlogging, inconvenient for any farmer who might otherwise have wished to level the site, has arguably helped preserve it.
The earthwork itself is roughly circular, measuring about 35.5 metres north to south and 37.7 metres east to west, which puts it within the typical range for a rath of its kind. The enclosing bank is approximately three metres wide; it stands less than a metre above the interior ground level but rises nearly two metres on the outer face, where it meets the fosse. That asymmetry is deliberate. On the southern side, the bank has been cut into the natural slope of the rise, giving it additional height and definition against the hillside. The fosse itself is nearly five metres wide and just over a metre deep, and its persistent dampness is a direct consequence of the stream and drainage activity nearby. The interior is now filled with rushes, with scrub vegetation spreading along the bank, the kind of rough, unfarmed ground that often signals an earthwork that local tradition or simple inconvenience has left alone.
