Ringfort (Rath), Garrymore, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
Somewhere in the undulating pasture of Garrymore, a circular earthwork sits so thoroughly swallowed by scrub vegetation that it is easy to walk within a few metres of it and notice nothing at all.
That near-invisibility is itself a kind of curiosity, because what lies beneath the brambles and overgrowth is a well-preserved rath, a type of ringfort that would once have formed the enclosed farmstead of an early medieval Irish family, probably dating from somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries.
The site was recorded and compiled by Denis Power, with notes uploaded in June 2013. It occupies a gentle west-facing slope in poorly-drained ground, the kind of heavy, undulating pasture common to this part of County Limerick. The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring 25.4 metres on the northwest-to-southeast axis and 25.8 metres northeast-to-southwest, making it a modest but coherent example of the form. An earthen bank surrounds the interior, running to about 1.9 metres in width and standing to an internal height of 0.8 metres. Outside that bank runs a fosse, the term for the accompanying ditch that would have been dug to provide the material for the bank itself and to add a further obstacle to any approach. The fosse appears consistent in width all the way around, with one notable exception: on the eastern side, a causeway roughly 3.5 metres wide interrupts it, rising only a fraction above the surrounding ground level. That causeway almost certainly marks the original entrance point, the place where people and livestock passed in and out of the enclosure in daily life over a thousand years ago.
Access to the site requires crossing private farmland, so any visit should be approached with that in mind, and the dense scrub means the earthworks are more easily felt underfoot than seen from a distance. The interior surface is uneven and slopes slightly to the north, which gives some sense of the ground even when vegetation obscures the bank itself. The eastern causeway is the clearest feature to seek out, and standing on it offers a tangible connection to the original layout of the place. Autumn or winter, when the scrub has thinned a little, will make the earthen bank easier to trace.
