Ringfort (Rath), Ballyfraley, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
A low earthen ring sitting in a Limerick pasture might not immediately announce itself as anything older than the field it occupies, but the circular enclosure at Ballyfraley is the kind of site that rewards a second look.
This is a rath, a type of ringfort built during the early medieval period in Ireland, typically between roughly 500 and 1000 AD, and used as an enclosed farmstead by a single family or small community. The bank and ditch that define the circle here are still legible in the landscape, even if the interior has long since been swallowed by dense overgrowth.
The enclosure is roughly 25 metres in diameter, a modest but not unusual size for a rath. The earthen bank rises about 0.95 metres on its interior face and 1.8 metres on the outside, giving an impression of greater height when approached from without. Around the exterior runs a fosse, the formal term for the defensive ditch that accompanies such banks, here measuring nearly two metres wide and just under a metre deep. The fosse survives all the way around the circuit, though it is at its most pronounced and is currently waterlogged along the eastern to southern arc. The best-preserved stretch of the bank itself runs from the west-southwest around to the north-northwest. A shallow field drain on a roughly north-northeast to south-southwest axis feeds into the fosse at the south-southwest, which likely contributes to the waterlogging on the eastern side. The survey was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011.
The site sits on a gentle northeast-facing slope in working pasture, which means cattle have had access to it. At the north-northwest, the animals have worn a gap of about 2.5 metres through the enclosing bank, and a field boundary runs close along the outer edge of the fosse to the north and northeast. Visitors should expect the interior to be almost entirely inaccessible due to dense vegetation, with only a narrow band around the inner perimeter offering any clear footing. The waterlogged sections of the fosse are worth noting if you intend to walk the full circuit, particularly after wet weather. As with most ringforts in private farmland, access would require permission from the landowner, and the site itself is best understood as a feature of the agricultural landscape rather than a monument in any formal, managed sense.