Ringfort (Rath), Graigacurragh, Co. Limerick

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Graigacurragh, Co. Limerick

A cluster of flag irises growing in a low, waterlogged ditch is not the most obvious clue that you are standing beside an early medieval enclosure, but at Graigacurragh in County Limerick, that is precisely what gives the game away.

The ringfort here sits on low-lying marshy ground, and its external fosse, a shallow defensive ditch that once helped define the boundary of the settlement, has become a linear bed of yellow iris. The ditch is narrow, measuring roughly 0.6 metres wide and 0.4 metres deep, and its botanical cover is now more conspicuous than the earthwork beneath it.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when defined by earthen banks rather than stone, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They served as enclosed farmsteads, protecting a family and their livestock within a circular or sub-circular boundary. The example at Graigacurragh is sub-circular in plan, measuring approximately 23.9 metres north to south and 20.6 metres east to west. Its defining feature is a scarped edge, essentially a cut or shaped slope in the ground, rather than a built-up bank, and that scarp rises to around 0.8 metres in height and 1.6 metres in width. It is most legible along the southern arc, though heavily masked by overgrowth across much of its circuit. The site was recorded and compiled by Denis Power, with aerial photography undertaken in October 2002 as part of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland.

The fort lies immediately west of a farm passageway leading to a farmyard complex to the south, and the two gaps in the overgrowth, one to the north at 2.3 metres wide and one to the northeast at 1.1 metres, are now used by cattle moving between the adjacent field and the interior, which is level and under rough pasture. The northern arc of the fosse, where the iris growth is thickest, is the best-preserved stretch and worth examining carefully. Visiting in late spring or early summer, when the flag irises are in flower, makes the line of the ditch considerably easier to trace across the marshy ground.

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Pete F
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