Ringfort (Rath), Tooraleagan, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
A ringfort that appears to change shape depending on which map you consult is a curious thing.
The earthwork in the townland of Tooraleagan, close to the County Limerick and Cork border, has been recorded as rectangular, sub-rectangular, and roughly circular across successive surveys, a discrepancy that reflects as much about the limits of nineteenth-century cartography as it does about the monument itself. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, defended by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and they are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish landscape. This particular example sits in pasture about 400 metres north of the Tooraleagan River, a modest watercourse that serves double duty as both a townland boundary with Sraharla and the county boundary between Limerick and Cork.
The site appears on the 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey Ireland six-inch map under the name Bawnlougha Fort, rendered there as a rectangular enclosure. A bawn, in Irish architectural tradition, refers to an enclosed yard or defensive space, and the name suggests the site carried local significance well into the modern period. By the time the 25-inch map was published in 1897, surveyors recorded a sub-rectangular area roughly 30 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west, defined by a scarp running from east through south to west. Even then, portions of the monument had already been absorbed into the surrounding field system. More recent satellite imagery, including Digital Globe orthoimages taken between 2011 and 2013 and corresponding Google Earth imagery, shows the outline of a roughly circular enclosure approximately 28 metres in diameter, with a poorly preserved bank and fosse still legible from above. The eastern side is cut by a field boundary running northwest to southeast, continuing a long process of attrition that the monument has been losing for well over a century.
Access to the site would require permission from the landowner, as it sits within working pasture. The clearest impression of its form is likely gained not on the ground but through aerial imagery, where the curving scarp and surviving earthwork are more legible than they would be underfoot. Anyone visiting the wider area should note the proximity of the Tooraleagan River to the south, which provides a useful orientation point. The monument is best appreciated with the county boundary in mind, sitting as it does in a stretch of countryside where Limerick gives way to Cork, at the edges of things in more than one sense.