Ringfort (Rath), Fintra More, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
On a south-east-facing pasture slope in County Clare, a low ring of earth sits quietly in the grass, easy to overlook and easier still to misread.
The rising ground immediately to the north creates what looks at first like a fosse, the outer ditch that typically accompanies a ringfort, but it is simply the natural lie of the land playing tricks. No ditch was ever dug here; the illusion is geological, not archaeological.
The site is a rath, the commonest type of Irish ringfort, built by enclosing a roughly circular area with a raised earthen bank. Ringforts served as enclosed farmsteads throughout the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and thousands survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation. This one at Fintra More is subcircular in plan, measuring twenty-four metres across in both directions, and its bank is between three and a half and just over four metres wide, though it rises only twenty to forty centimetres above the surrounding ground. At the north-east, even that modest height has been worn down to little more than a scarp, a bare edge in the earth. Two gaps in the bank, one at the north-north-west and one at the south-east, each about a metre wide, are so eroded that it is unclear whether either was ever an original entrance. The interior slopes gently southward and is free of scrub, which at least allows the full circuit of the enclosure to be read without obstruction.