Ringfort, Ennisnag, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Ringforts
A tree-lined oval earthwork near the Kings River in County Kilkenny is one of those features that has quietly held its place in the landscape for centuries, easily dismissed as a natural rise or a field boundary by anyone unfamiliar with what to look for.
Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or lios, were enclosed farmsteads typically built during the early medieval period, their circular or oval banks originally surrounding a family's dwelling and outbuildings. This example at Ennisnag measures roughly 57 metres along its north-east to south-west axis and approximately 48 metres across, making it a reasonably substantial enclosure of its type.
The ringfort appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map, surveyed in 1839, and has continued to show on subsequent revisions of the same mapping, suggesting the earthwork was legible and recognisable to surveyors across different periods. The Kings River runs east to west about 150 metres to the south, a proximity that would have mattered to any early medieval farming community for whom reliable access to fresh water was a practical necessity rather than an incidental amenity. Trees now grow around the perimeter, which is a common enough occurrence at ringfort sites, where the earthen banks have often been left untouched by the plough and allowed to develop their own modest woodland character over time.