Ringfort (Rath), Friarstown, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
A double-banked ringfort sitting in open pasture near Friarstown has quietly outlasted the farming community that built it by well over a thousand years, its earthworks still readable in the landscape even as cattle continue to churn the ground inside.
What gives it a particular quality is the layering: two concentric earth-and-stone banks separated by a fosse, the ditch dug between them to reinforce the enclosure. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the standard farmstead form of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century, and the presence of a double bank rather than a single one suggests this was a site of some local consequence, perhaps belonging to a family of middling status within the old Gaelic social order.
The monument was recorded and compiled by Denis Power, with the survey notes uploaded in April 2013. The enclosure is oval in plan, measuring 36 metres east to west and 32 metres north to south, and sits on a gentle north-east-facing slope with open views to the east and west. The internal bank is the more substantial of the two, reaching an external height of 0.7 metres and a width of 2.4 metres, and it survives continuously around the circuit. At some point between its construction and the present day, a section of it from the north-west to the north-east was absorbed into the local field boundary, which is a common fate for earthworks in agricultural landscapes: the labour of maintaining a wall was saved by simply using what was already there. The fosse, a ditch roughly 2 metres wide, is clearest on the eastern and south-western arc. The outer bank is lower and less distinct throughout, surviving most visibly on the north-eastern to north-western side.
The interior surface is described as gently undulating and poached by cattle, meaning the ground has been broken up and pitted by hooves over time, which makes it harder to read any subtle internal features that might otherwise be detectable. The site sits in rolling pasture, so access depends on the land being in agricultural use; anyone visiting should seek permission from the landowner beforehand. The eastward and westward views that the surveyors noted are worth taking in, as they give a sense of why this particular slope was chosen: good visibility across the surrounding terrain would have mattered to whoever enclosed this ground in the early medieval period.