Ringfort (Rath), Bog, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Ringforts
Some of the most revealing archaeological sites in Ireland are invisible from the ground.
On a slight north-west-facing slope in the townland of Bog, County Wexford, there is a ringfort that most people would walk across without any suspicion that they were treading the outline of an early medieval enclosure. Its presence is betrayed only from the air, where the buried remains of a surrounding ditch, or fosse, leave a faint but legible impression on growing crops, the differential moisture in the soil causing the plants above the old cut to ripen at a slightly different rate from their neighbours.
A rath, as this type of enclosure is also known, was typically the farmstead of a relatively prosperous family during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. The one recorded here is subcircular in plan, measuring approximately 75 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and around 65 metres on the north-west to south-east axis, which puts it at a reasonable size for the type. The cropmark shows a single fosse defining the perimeter, with what appears to be an entrance gap oriented to the north-east, a facing that would have offered some shelter from prevailing weather while keeping the entrance in practical use. Thousands of raths survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation, but a considerable number, like this one, have been levelled by centuries of cultivation and persist only as soil anomalies, readable in dry summers when aerial photography catches the right conditions.