Ringfort (Rath), Nodstown, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Nodstown, Co. Tipperary

A low rise of ground in County Tipperary's Nodstown townland holds the remains of a rath, a type of ringfort that was the standard form of enclosed farmstead across early medieval Ireland, typically dating to somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries.

What makes this one quietly interesting is the combination of its elevated, east-facing position and the way the modern landscape has quietly encroached upon it, field boundaries and a road slicing through what was once a coherent defensive enclosure.

The rath encloses a roughly circular area measuring approximately 35 metres north to south and 33 metres east to west, which is a fairly typical diameter for a single-ringed example. Around this interior runs an earth and stone bank, surviving to an external height of between one and one and a half metres, and most legible on the eastern side. Beyond the bank lies an outer fosse, the term for a defensive ditch, here measuring around four and a half metres across at the top. The entrance, three metres wide, also faces east, which was a common orientation for ringfort entrances, thought by some scholars to relate to the direction of the morning sun or simply to practical matters of approach. Ordnance Survey mapping from 1953 and 1954 documents the field boundaries and road that now cut across the southern and northern extents of the site, obscuring the fosse on those sides entirely.

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Pete F
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