Ringfort (Rath), Ballysheen, Co. Wexford

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballysheen, Co. Wexford

Some ancient sites announce themselves with standing stones or grassy banks you can walk around.

This one in Ballysheen, County Wexford, reveals itself only from the air. On the ground, there is virtually nothing to see; but aerial photographs show a faint cropmark tracing the outline of a circular enclosure on a gentle west-facing slope. Cropmarks appear when buried features affect the growth of surface vegetation, with ditches and banks producing subtle variations in colour and height that become legible only when viewed from above.

What those photographs reveal is a double-ditched ringfort, with an internal diameter of roughly 30 metres and an outer diameter of around 40 metres. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, where a family and their livestock would have lived within a raised circular bank and ditch. A double enclosure like this one suggests a site of some status; a single ring was the norm, and the additional boundary may have indicated greater wealth or the need to manage animals more carefully. What makes this particular site additionally interesting is that it sits immediately adjacent to a second rath to the north, the two sharing the same landscape in a conjoined arrangement. Paired or clustered ringforts are known elsewhere in Ireland and may reflect family groupings, extended settlements, or successive phases of occupation, though the specific history of this pair has not been documented in detail.

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Pete F
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