Ringfort, Mohil, Co. Kilkenny

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Ringforts

Ringfort, Mohil, Co. Kilkenny

What makes the hilltop at Mohil particularly striking is not one ringfort but three, clustered within the same field above the Dinin river valley in County Kilkenny.

Ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, are common enough across the Irish landscape, but finding a grouping of three in such close proximity on a single flat-topped hill is considerably less so.

O'Kelly, writing in 1969, noted the presence of two raths and a ringed fort in Mulhall's field within Mohil townland. One of the three survives as an upstanding earthwork; a second, lying roughly 20 metres to its south, has been levelled and is no longer visible above ground. The third came to light only during fieldwork in 1987, identified not by any earthwork but by a roughly circular patch of coarser grass about 20 metres in diameter, sitting approximately 25 metres to the south-west of the upstanding fort and 25 metres to the north-west of the levelled one. That a feature invisible to the casual eye could still leave its trace in differential grass growth centuries later is a reminder of how much the Irish countryside continues to hold just beneath the surface.

The site sits on the eastern side of the Dinin river valley, with open views in every direction across the rolling pasture. The upstanding ringfort remains the most legible of the three, though the broader significance of the location really comes into focus once you know where to look across the field.

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