Ringfort (Rath), Croghtabeg, Co. Kilkenny

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Croghtabeg, Co. Kilkenny

In a field in Croghtabeg, Co. Kilkenny, the land holds a quiet imprint of early medieval life.

A roughly oval earthwork, measuring around 32 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west internally, marks the outline of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort. These were the most common form of rural settlement in Ireland between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, typically enclosing a farmstead and its inhabitants behind a raised earthen bank. What survives here is modest but legible: a low bank, a partial external fosse, and a gap in the eastern side that is almost certainly where people once entered and left.

The earthen bank survives best in the eastern half of the site, where it reaches an overall width of around five metres at its base, though it stands only half a metre or so above the interior ground level. A fosse, the shallow defensive ditch that would originally have run around the outside of the bank, is still faintly traceable in the north-eastern sector, roughly 1.5 metres wide and 0.3 metres deep. Three gaps interrupt the circuit of the bank, at the north, east, and west, but the eastern opening, at four metres wide, is the most substantial and the most likely candidate for the original entrance. Trees now ring the perimeter, and the interior is open grassland under pasture.

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Pete F
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