Ringfort (Rath), Ballykeerogemore, Co. Wexford

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballykeerogemore, Co. Wexford

In the relatively flat farmland of Ballykeerogemore in County Wexford, a long-vanished enclosure has left behind only the faintest of signatures, one legible not to the eye on the ground but to the camera pointed downward from the air.

A cropmark, the differential growth of plants above buried features that causes darker or lighter bands to appear in aerial photographs, traces out a near-perfect circle roughly 25 metres across. Below the soil, a single fosse, essentially a ditch dug to define and defend a boundary, is all that remains of what was once a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort.

Ringforts are among the most common early medieval monument types in Ireland, with tens of thousands once scattered across the landscape. Most date broadly to the period between the fifth and twelfth centuries and served as enclosed farmsteads, the encircling bank and ditch offering a degree of protection for a family and their livestock. The example at Ballykeerogemore sits on a slight rise within an otherwise level setting, a positioning that would have given its occupants a modest but practical advantage over the surrounding terrain. With a diameter of around 25 metres, it falls toward the smaller end of the scale for such enclosures. Whatever earthworks once defined it above ground have long since been levelled, absorbed into the working agricultural landscape. Its existence is known almost entirely through aerial survey work.

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