Ringfort (Rath), Grange, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Grange, Co. Wexford

Some ancient sites announce themselves with earthworks, standing stones, or at least a depression in the ground that rewards a curious visitor.

This one does none of that. A D-shaped enclosure roughly 25 metres across lies in the townland of Grange in County Wexford, and it is entirely invisible at ground level. The only evidence for its existence comes from aerial photographs, where the buried remains of a fosse, the encircling ditch that once defined a rath or ringfort, show up as a cropmark, a subtle variation in vegetation colour caused by the soil disturbance below.

A rath was a roughly circular enclosure, typically of the early medieval period, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and used as a farmstead. This example is D-shaped rather than fully circular, and a modern field bank running northeast to southwest bisects it, apparently obscuring or destroying whatever remains existed to the northwest of that line. A second rath, a catalogued site, sits roughly 55 metres to the southeast, suggesting this was once a more densely settled corner of the landscape than its present fields would suggest.

Because the enclosure leaves no surface trace, there is nothing to see in person, and the cropmark itself is only legible from the air under the right conditions of drought and crop growth. What the site offers, then, is less a destination than a reminder that the ground beneath ordinary farmland frequently contains a different geography entirely, one that only becomes visible when looked at from the right angle.

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Pete F
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