Ringfort (Rath), Finnor More, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Finnor More, Co. Clare

On a north-facing slope in County Clare, at the edge of a natural shelf in the land, sits a roughly circular earthwork with no visible entrance.

That last detail is quietly arresting. A ringfort, known in Irish as a rath, was typically a farmstead enclosure of the early medieval period, its bank and ditch designed to keep livestock in and opportunistic raiders out, with a clear gap for coming and going. This one, at Finnor More, offers no such gap, at least none that survives or can be identified on the ground today.

The structure is modest in scale but well-preserved in outline. The interior measures approximately 23 metres east to west and 20 metres north to south, enclosed by a grass-covered earthen bank that varies in width from three to five metres. The bank is slightly more pronounced on the western side, where it rises to about 1.6 metres on the exterior face, compared to around 0.8 metres on the east. Beyond the bank, a fosse, which is simply a ditch dug to provide material for the bank and to add an extra line of defence, runs along the north-west to south-east arc of the enclosure. Its base measures between 2.4 and 3.4 metres across, though it is relatively shallow now, with a maximum depth of around 0.3 metres. The site sits at the northern edge of a shelf in the landscape, with the ground falling away on a north-facing slope, a position that would have given its original inhabitants a reasonable outlook over the surrounding terrain.

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Pete F
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