Ringfort (Rath), Garranmore, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Ringforts
What makes this particular earthwork in Garranmore quietly remarkable is not the ringfort itself but the fact that it does not stand alone.
A fosse, the defensive ditch that typically encircles these early medieval enclosures, connects it physically to a second ringfort immediately to the northwest, making the two structures conjoined in a way that is relatively unusual in the Irish landscape. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when formed from earthen banks rather than stone, were the most common type of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its inhabitants behind a raised bank and outer ditch. This one sits in pasture on a gentle north-facing slope, its oval interior measuring roughly 26 metres north to south and around 30 metres east to west.
The bank itself is well preserved, with an external height of just over two metres and a total width of nearly nine metres, tapering to about one metre across the top. The original entrance, at the south-southeast, is just over six metres wide at its mouth, narrowing to four metres at the base, and there are two later breaches in the bank to the north and west-southwest, each about two metres across, likely opened at some point to allow stock through. The fosse is deepest on the northwest to north-northeast arc, where it reaches a depth of 1.65 metres, and becomes much shallower and less distinct as it continues around toward the east and south-southeast, where it disappears entirely. A short stretch of field boundary, around twelve metres long, abuts the outer edge of the fosse on the west-northwest side, suggesting that at some point after the ringfort fell out of use, whoever was farming the land found it convenient to incorporate the old earthworks into their field system. The eastern half of the interior is now obscured by overgrowth.