Ringfort (Rath), Aughiska More, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
A low hillock in the rough pasture and rushes of Aughiska More, Co. Clare, holds the remains of an early medieval ringfort that has been quietly accumulating map entries since the nineteenth century.
What makes this particular site a little odd is its topographical situation: it sits in a slight hollow relative to the hillocks that rise to its east and south, meaning it was never a commanding presence on the landscape, and yet to the north it opens onto wide views. The earthwork itself is nearly circular, measuring roughly 21 metres north to south and 20 metres east to west, and is defined on its eastern arc not by a built bank at all but by a natural scarp with a wide flat berm running along its inner edge. On the western and northern sides, a broad, low, round-topped bank, averaging seven metres wide and standing about a metre high, does the work of enclosure instead. The interior is slightly dished, a detail that sometimes points to centuries of settled use within the enclosure.
A rath is the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland, typically a circular or near-circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and associated with early medieval farmsteads, broadly dated to between the sixth and tenth centuries. At Aughiska More, someone at some point added a stone wall, a metre high, immediately south of the berm, curving to follow the rath's outline and extending away from it to both east and west. Whether this wall is contemporary with the original enclosure or a later addition is not recorded. A gap of just over two metres on the eastern side may preserve the original entrance, though it is currently used as an everyday pathway. The site appeared, at least partially, on the first Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, was more fully outlined on the twenty-five-inch plan of 1897, and was hachured on the Cassini edition of 1906. By 1996 it was catalogued, perhaps a touch dismissively, simply as an "Enclosure" in the Record of Monuments and Places. Approximately 98 metres to the west-northwest lies a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site typically identified by a mound of fire-cracked stone, suggesting that the broader area saw human activity well before any ringfort was built here.