Ringfort (Rath), Curraghgraigue, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Curraghgraigue, Co. Tipperary

A stand of larch trees growing inside an ancient earthwork gives this North Tipperary ringfort an oddly domestic quality, as though someone long ago decided the interior of a defended enclosure was the obvious place for a small wood.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when defined primarily by earthen banks, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its associated structures. Most survive today as grassy circles in otherwise open fields, so the combination of mature trees rooted into the bank itself and scrub growth along the outer western face lends this particular example a slightly overgrown, layered atmosphere.

The fort sits just below the crest of a hill on a gradual north-easterly slope in pasture, a position that would have offered both a degree of elevation and reasonable agricultural land nearby. The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring approximately 24.6 metres north to south and 25.6 metres east to west, with an earth and stone bank that stands about two metres high on the interior face and 1.3 metres on the exterior. Outside the bank runs a narrow, steep-sided fosse, the term for the defensive ditch that typically accompanied such earthworks, here around 2.8 metres wide and 1.3 metres deep, with a flat bottom and sharply cut sides suggesting it has survived in reasonable condition. A gap of about 1.4 metres in the bank to the north-east may represent the original entrance, a modest opening that would once have controlled movement in and out of the enclosure.

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Pete F
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