Ringfort (Rath), Bleenaleen, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Bleenaleen, Co. Tipperary

What is now a gently sloping pasture field in Bleenaleen, County Tipperary preserves the faint outline of a ringfort, the kind of early medieval enclosure that once served as a farmstead or residence for a family of some local standing.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches thrown up around a domestic interior, and they are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland. This one, however, has been considerably reduced, its defining bank levelled to the point where only a careful eye or a measuring tape would confirm what it once was.

The remains describe a roughly oval area measuring around 20 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, with a bank surviving to just over half a metre in internal height and slightly more on the exterior, and spreading to nearly 14 metres in width. The interior falls away downslope to the north and has long since been absorbed into the surrounding field. When Office of Public Works officials visited the site in March 1963, the ringfort was still upstanding, which makes the contrast with its present condition all the more telling. Within a relatively short radius, it sits in notable company: another ringfort lies roughly 230 metres to the north, and a separate enclosure sits approximately 220 metres to the south-east, suggesting this corner of Tipperary supported a cluster of early settlement activity whose individual stories have otherwise gone unrecorded.

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