Ringfort (Rath), Deerpark, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Deerpark, Co. Tipperary

A ringfort that has been ploughed, trampled by cattle, and driven over by farm machinery might not sound like much of a monument, but this oval enclosure in Deerpark, Co. Tipperary, still holds its shape across a gentle south-facing slope above the Suir River valley.

That it remains legible at all is quietly remarkable.

A rath, as this type of monument is also known, is an early medieval farmstead enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. Thousands survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation. This one measures approximately 38.5 metres north to south and 43.3 metres east to west, enclosed by a bank around six metres wide, though its external height has been reduced to just 0.37 metres. Outside the bank runs a fosse, a shallow defensive or boundary ditch, here about three metres wide and only 0.15 metres deep. The southern quadrant of the bank is particularly worn down, having served as an access point for farm machinery, and this same sector may originally have been the location of the entrance into the enclosure. Along the eastern bank, a hedgerow runs north to south, and cattle erosion has further softened the earthwork in that area.

What the site illustrates is how thoroughly the working landscape can absorb and slowly diminish a structure that is well over a thousand years old, not through neglect exactly, but through the ordinary pressures of agricultural life continuing, season after season, across the same ground.

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Pete F
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