Ringfort (Rath), Kilcash, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kilcash, Co. Tipperary

On the south-eastern slope of a ridge running north-east to south-west near Kilcash in County Tipperary, a low earthen enclosure sits quietly in pasture, easy to overlook and easier still to misread as a natural feature of the land.

What gives it away, if you know what you are looking at, is the asymmetry of its banks. On the north-western side, where the ground rises into the ridge, the builders simply cut into the slope and let the hillside do the work, leaving only an internal scarp rather than a raised bank. Everywhere else, the enclosure follows the more familiar pattern of a ringfort, or rath, a type of enclosed farmstead built throughout Ireland from roughly the early medieval period onwards, typically by a single family or small farming household.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring about 27 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west, enclosed by an earthen bank reinforced in places with stone. The bank is modest, rising just over a metre above the exterior ground level on most sides, and the entrance, about two and a half metres wide, is placed in the south-eastern quadrant. Near the centre of the enclosure there are traces of what surveyors describe as a ring-feeder, a slight circular depression or feature that may once have served a practical function within the enclosed space, though its exact original purpose is not always easy to determine in sites of this kind. A small boulder sits near the bank in the same south-eastern quarter; it may be a natural outcrop, though the smaller stones gathered around it look more like the accumulated debris of field clearance over many generations. A stream runs close by to the east, the kind of detail that would have mattered greatly to whoever first chose this spot. The main road along the top of the ridge has been built up over time and now cuts off any clear view to the north.

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Pete F
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