Ringfort (Rath), Ballymacsradeen, Co. Limerick

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballymacsradeen, Co. Limerick

A local account holds that this early medieval enclosure was levelled in 1975, yet the earthwork persists.

Aerial imagery taken as recently as June 2018 still shows its roughly oval outline pressed into the pasture of Ballymacsradeen, a quiet persistence that says something about how stubbornly these features hold their shape in the land even after deliberate clearance.

A rath, to use the Irish term for this class of monument, is a ringfort enclosed by an earthen bank and ditch, typically dating from the early medieval period and interpreted as a defended farmstead. The example at Ballymacsradeen sits on a south-facing slope overlooking the Camoge River, which runs some 55 metres to the south and marks the townland boundary with Tullovin. It appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840 as an oval-shaped earthwork, and again on the 25-inch edition of 1897, by which point a field boundary running east to west had already begun cutting across its southern sector. When the Archaeological Survey of Ireland recorded the monument in 2007, the surveyors found a suboval area measuring roughly 34 metres east-northeast to west-southwest and 28 metres north-northwest to south-southeast. A bank up to 10.9 metres wide still enclosed the site from the south-east around to the north-west, and a fosse, the outer ditch characteristic of such monuments, measuring 3.7 metres wide and 1.8 metres deep, remained visible along the northern and eastern arc. That fosse appears to have been re-cut at some point to serve as an agricultural drain, a common enough fate for ancient earthwork ditches. The field boundary that once intruded across the southern sector had, by the time of the 2007 survey, been removed.

The site lies in open pasture, and the monument sits within a wider landscape of earthwork remains, with a related earthwork recorded some 200 metres to the south-east. Visitors approaching on foot should look for the low, broad bank still incorporated into the existing field boundary along the northern and eastern edges, and the gentle interior hollow that gives the enclosure its residual shape. Aerial imagery, including the orthoimage layers available through the OSi and Google Earth, offers the clearest sense of the outline for those who want to orientate themselves before visiting.

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