Ringfort (Rath), Knockanglass, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Knockanglass, Co. Tipperary

On the western slope of a hill at Knockanglass in County Tipperary, the land has been quietly rearranged around an ancient enclosure without quite erasing it.

The rath here, an early medieval ringfort of the kind that once served as a fortified farmstead for a family of some local standing, is oval in plan and just under fifty metres across at its widest point. What makes it worth a second look is the way it has been absorbed, partially, into the working landscape: field boundaries now run through sections of the earthwork, borrowing its banks as convenient ready-made divisions, while the structure underneath persists.

The enclosure is defined by three concentric elements, each still measurable. An inner bank, nearly a metre and a quarter high on its outer face, is separated from an outer bank by a flat-bottomed fosse, the term for a defensive ditch, roughly two and a half metres wide and close to a metre deep. The outer bank is broader still, over five metres wide, though it no longer runs continuously around the circuit. In the eastern quadrant it has been cleared away entirely, its material presumably spread or carted off at some point during agricultural improvement. In the southern quadrant it has been pressed into service as an east-west field boundary. A gap roughly 1.8 metres wide in the west-northwest section of the inner bank is likely the original entrance, though the fosse and outer bank are no longer visible at that point. Despite all of this, the interior of the enclosure has remained relatively open, with scrub and brambles encroaching only into the western portion.

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Pete F
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