Ringfort (Rath), Craggagh, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
A low, overgrown bank in a Clare field might not announce itself as anything remarkable, but the oval earthwork at Craggagh carries a quietly complicated past.
It is a rath, the earthen equivalent of the stone-walled ringfort, a form of enclosed farmstead that was common across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to twelfth centuries. This particular example sits on a slightly elevated rise with open views from west to north, which would have made reasonable sense to whoever first chose the spot. The enclosure is modest, estimated at around fifteen metres on its northeast to southwest axis and twenty metres on its northwest to southeast axis, and much of the defining bank and scarp is now buried under vegetation. To the west and northeast, the earthwork has disappeared into the overgrowth almost entirely.
What makes the site more interesting than its battered condition might suggest is the layering of activity around it. By the time the Ordnance Survey recorded the area in 1842, the enclosure was already marked on the six-inch maps, and it appeared again on the 1915 edition. At some point, a straight field wall was built along the site's edge, running from the east-northeast to the southwest, and a relatively modern house was constructed just outside it. There is a drop of around 1.2 metres from the interior of the enclosure down to the outer ground level near the house, which raises the possibility that the ground beside the house was substantially dug out during its construction, shaving away part of the ancient profile in the process. Two cashels sit within roughly 120 metres to the southwest, a cashel being a ringfort defined by a dry-stone wall rather than an earthen bank, and another enclosure lies about 210 metres to the south-southeast. Several of the field boundaries threading between these monuments are thought to be ancient rather than modern additions, meaning the present-day landscape may still follow, at least in part, the divisions laid down by the people who used these enclosures.