Raths, Curragh, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Barrows
On the Curragh of Kildare, better known today as the home of Irish flat racing and a long-established military camp, something much older survives quietly in the grass. Among several earthworks recorded across this flat, open plain is a small rath, a type of enclosed farmstead or dwelling typical of early medieval Ireland, whose modest dimensions tell a story worth pausing over. The central platform is only four metres across, slightly domed, and ringed by a fosse, that is, a cut ditch, with faint traces of a low outer bank beyond it. The whole thing measures just over thirteen metres in overall diameter, making it one of the more diminutive examples of a monument type that would once have been a familiar feature of the Irish countryside.
The site was documented by Seán P. Ó Ríordáin, one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century Irish archaeology, in a 1950 publication that catalogued it as Site G and included a scaled cross-section drawn on an east-west axis. That record captures the rath before further damage could obscure it entirely, because the northern portion has since been disturbed by military trenches, a reminder that the Curragh's long occupation as a garrison and training ground has left its own marks on the landscape, sometimes cutting straight through whatever lay underneath.