Ringfort (Rath), Killeen, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Ringforts
On the north-east-facing lower slope of a ridge in Killeen, County Tipperary, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, its banks and ditches preserving the outline of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was the standard unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland.
Thousands of these survive across the country, but what makes this one worth pausing over is the detail visible in its construction: not one enclosing bank but two, separated by a fosse, the broad U-shaped ditch that would have added both physical and symbolic weight to the boundary of whoever lived within.
The site measures roughly 31 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west, with an inner bank about two metres wide and an outer bank considerably more substantial at 4.3 metres wide, its exterior face still standing to 1.64 metres. Between them runs the fosse, nearly four metres across and 0.7 metres deep. Inside the enclosure, the upper portion of the interior is occupied by a raised circular area of around 13 metres in diameter, its centre hollowed into a shallow concavity about six metres across, a feature whose original function is not recorded but which may relate to a former structure. A causeway 3.3 metres wide crosses the fosse in the south-west quadrant, though both banks are worn down in that area. A possible entrance gap survives in the north-east quadrant, though it may be a later break rather than an original opening. The site slopes quite steeply to the north-west, which would have affected drainage and visibility in ways any early medieval farmer would have understood immediately.
