Ringfort (Rath), Annagh, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
A low earthwork rising from a Limerick pasture field marks the edge of two counties at once, and the boundary of two entirely different worlds in time.
This ringfort in the townland of Annagh sits roughly 400 metres south of the townland boundary with Ballywire, a line that also serves as the county boundary with Tipperary. It is, in other words, a monument that barely belongs to either place, pressed into a marginal strip of farmland that administrative history has long struggled to claim.
A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and, often, an outer ditch; thousands of them survive across Ireland, most dating to the early medieval period between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, and many were used as enclosed farmsteads. The Annagh example was recorded on the 1897 edition of the Ordnance Survey Ireland 25-inch map as a raised, sub-circular area measuring approximately 52 metres east to west and 41 metres north to south. Its defining features include a scarp, the steep face of the raised platform, along with a fosse, which is simply the accompanying ditch, running from west around through north to east, and again from northeast to southwest. A modern field boundary running north to south has truncated the monument at both its northeast and southeast sides, shearing off what may once have been a more complete circuit. A gap in the southwest of the enclosure is thought to be a possible original entrance feature, which would place arrivals facing roughly towards the interior of the monument in a way consistent with other early medieval sites. The monument was recorded by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded to the survey record in July 2021.
The site is in private agricultural land, so access would require the landowner's permission. For those wishing to get a sense of its form without setting foot on the field, the monument shows clearly on the oblique aerial photograph referenced in the survey record, taken in October 2002, and is also visible on Google Earth satellite imagery, where the slight rise of the platform and the curve of the surrounding earthworks can be made out against the surrounding pasture. As with many such sites, the late afternoon light of autumn, when low sun throws the faint topography into relief, is when its shape becomes most legible from above.