Ringfort (Rath), Lannagh, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Ringforts
Most ringforts announce themselves clearly enough: a circular earthen bank, a ditch, perhaps the ghost of an entrance gap.
The enclosure at Lannagh in County Wexford is more reticent. What survives here is a roughly rectangular, grass-covered area measuring about 37 metres on its longer axis and 25 metres across, defined on two sides by low earthen banks and on the remaining two by what may be little more than field banks or a gentle scarp in the ground. The banks that do survive are only around 30 centimetres high and between four and five and a half metres wide. There is no visible ditch, known in the archaeology of such sites as a fosse, and no recognisable entrance can be made out.
The site sits on level ground, which is itself a mild curiosity. Raths, the earthwork enclosures typically built in early medieval Ireland to surround a farmstead or house, are often sited with at least a little topographic advantage. Here, the flat setting and the unusual rectangular outline mean the identification as a rath is tentative rather than certain. Whether the earthworks represent a genuine early medieval enclosure gradually worn down by centuries of agricultural use, or something else entirely, is difficult to say from surface evidence alone. What gives the site its quiet interest is precisely that ambiguity: the landscape is holding something back, and the low humps in the grass are just legible enough to prompt the question.