Ringfort (Rath), Baurnalicka, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
At Baurnalicka in County Limerick, a ringfort sits quietly in a field of pasture, its circular outline more felt than seen.
One side of its boundary has been absorbed almost entirely into the working landscape of the farm, a dry-stone wall, 1.35 metres high and 1.55 metres wide, built in exactly the same manner as the field boundaries surrounding it. It would be easy to walk past without registering that you were skirting the edge of an enclosure that predates any of those modern divisions by well over a thousand years.
Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when they are earthen, are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the island. Most date from the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD, and served as enclosed farmsteads for individual families and their livestock. The one at Baurnalicka is roughly circular, measuring 49 metres north to south and 47.8 metres east to west. Its defining features are a scarped edge, essentially a cut or drop in the ground surface that once formed part of the enclosing bank, and that dry-stone wall. The scarp, which stands about 0.8 metres high and runs roughly north-northeast to south-southwest, is considerably more visible on that arc than on the south-southeast to south-southwest section, where it has become very indistinct. Denis Power, who compiled the record, noted that the interior slopes gently downward to the northwest, following the natural contour of the hillside on which it sits.
The site lies on a gentle northwest-facing slope and is under pasture, so access depends on the goodwill of the landowner. As is the case with many such monuments in working farmland, the best time to observe the outline is in low winter sunlight or after rain, when the slight variations in ground level become easier to read. The most legible section is the northern arc, where the combination of scarp and wall gives the clearest sense of the original enclosure. The southern portion requires patience; the boundary there has largely merged with the surrounding ground, and only careful attention to changes in surface level will reveal it.