Ringfort (Rath), Ballincor, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballincor, Co. Tipperary

Sitting in flat pasture on a broad ridge in County Tipperary, this ringfort quietly holds its ground in the middle of working farmland, enclosing a roughly circular space that has changed very little in its essential shape over more than a thousand years.

A ringfort, or rath, is an early medieval enclosure, typically dating from between the sixth and tenth centuries, built as a defended farmstead for a single family and their livestock. What makes this one worth attention is the quality of its survival: the earthen bank still stands to an external height of nearly 2.7 metres, and the surrounding fosse, a shallow defensive ditch, remains largely intact, waterlogged along its western side.

The structure is univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the double or triple rings seen at higher-status sites, and it measures roughly 44 metres north to south and just under 49 metres east to west. The bank itself is substantial, nearly 7.6 metres across at the base and 2.8 metres at the crest, with trees now growing along it. The interior is grass-covered with some nettles. Centuries of agricultural use have left their marks: a portion of the bank in the north-west quadrant has been removed where two field boundaries converge, and in the north-east sector the bank has been levelled and the fosse filled in, with a later field bank running up to meet the gap. A modern stone-revetted causeway with a drain crosses a filled section near the south-south-west, apparently replacing an earlier entrance. A post and barbed wire fence runs along the top of the northern bank. Despite all of this, the circuit is not broken through at the south-south-east, where the bank is merely denuded rather than cut, and the fosse in the north quadrant shows a sharp profile that suggests it may have been re-cut at some point, a detail that hints at continued use or deliberate maintenance long after the original construction.

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Pete F
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