Ringfort (Rath), Ballygoran, Co. Kildare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballygoran, Co. Kildare

By 1985, this ringfort near Ballygoran in County Kildare had vanished entirely. Where an early medieval enclosure once stood, no visible surface trace remained, and the land had presumably returned to the same mix of tillage and pasture that surrounds it today. That kind of disappearance is not unusual for earthworks in intensively farmed lowland areas, but the record of this particular site's final years carries a certain bathetic detail that sets it apart.

When the site was formally described in 1972, it was already fading. The monument took the form of a circular enclosure with an internal diameter of roughly 38 metres, defined by an earthen bank that had nearly vanished along its southern arc, and an outer fosse, the defensive ditch that typically surrounds a rath, which had partially silted up over the centuries. A rath is the commonest type of Irish ringfort, a raised circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used as a farmstead during the early medieval period. An entrance was recorded at the northern side, and the interior ground sloped gently westward. Planted in the south-east sector of this ancient enclosure, on a concrete base, stood a large ESB electricity pylon. It is a quietly striking image: a structure from the early medieval period, already half-erased by the plough, playing host to a concrete-footed utility tower. A second rath survives approximately 60 metres to the south, which suggests the area was once more densely settled than the present landscape implies.

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Pete F
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