Ringfort (Rath), Ballynagrana, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballynagrana, Co. Tipperary

Sitting in level pasture in County Tipperary, this modest circular earthwork is easy to overlook from a distance, yet it carries the quiet geometry of a place deliberately shaped by human hands many centuries ago.

What survives is a raised circular area eighteen metres in diameter, defined by an earthen scarp rather than the more dramatic stone walls or tall ramparts that tend to draw attention. This is a rath, the common Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and once so numerous across the Irish countryside that tens of thousands of examples are thought to have existed.

The details recorded here are precise enough to give the site a real presence. The enclosing scarp stands 1.4 metres high and is 3.2 metres wide, and beyond it runs an external fosse, a shallow ditch dug to define and defend the boundary, flat-bottomed and roughly 3.8 metres across at its widest. The fosse is best preserved along the south-west to north arc, though it has largely silted and infilled over the centuries; the outline is still legible at ground level between the north and south-west. A slight ramp, four metres wide, crosses the scarped edge at the east-south-east, and this is understood to mark where the original entrance once stood. Inside, the ground is level and unencumbered by growth, while mature thorn bushes have colonised the top of the scarp along the southern and western stretches, the kind of dense, uninvited boundary planting that has, ironically, helped protect many such earthworks from being ploughed away entirely.

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Pete F
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