Ringfort (Rath), Carrick, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Carrick, Co. Tipperary

On an east-facing slope just below the crest of a hill in Carrick, County Tipperary, a roughly circular earthwork sits in the kind of quiet, unremarkable farmland that has a habit of concealing early medieval life.

It is not dramatically positioned or visually commanding. That slight displacement from the hilltop, the deliberate choice of slope rather than summit, is itself a small puzzle worth pausing over.

The site is a rath, a type of ringfort common across Ireland from roughly the sixth to the tenth century, typically used as a defended farmstead by a single family or small community. This one measures approximately 33 metres north to south and 36 metres east to west, enclosed by an earthen bank around four metres wide. Internally the bank stands less than a metre high, but its outer face rises to over one and a half metres, giving it a more imposing character from outside. Beyond the bank runs a fosse, the encircling ditch that would have reinforced the boundary, here some five and a half metres wide and about half a metre deep. On the eastern side the bank has been reduced to little more than a scarp, a low eroded edge, and the fosse becomes harder to read. A gap of roughly two and a half metres in the north-east section of the bank may be an original entrance, though it is considered more likely a modern breach. The southern portion of the fosse has been partly filled with dumped stone, a common fate for such features as agricultural land management quietly works against them over generations.

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Pete F
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