Ringfort (Rath), Griston East, Co. Limerick

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Griston East, Co. Limerick

Sitting in open pasture in the townland of Griston East, County Limerick, this early medieval ringfort is the kind of monument that rewards patience and a good eye.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were typically the enclosed farmsteads of early Christian Ireland, their circular banks and ditches defining a domestic space that might have housed a family, their animals, and their stores. This one is easy to overlook from a distance, but the ground tells a different story once you know what to look for.

The monument was recorded as early as the 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey Ireland six-inch map, where it appears as a raised circular area defined by a scarp, accompanied by a conjoined enclosure or annexe immediately to the east, recorded separately under the reference LI049-174002. By the time of the 1897 OSi 25-inch survey, the site was mapped as a raised sub-circular area measuring approximately 33 metres north to south and 24 metres east to west, still defined by that same scarp. More recent aerial analysis, using Digital Globe orthoimages taken between 2011 and 2013 and Google Earth imagery, shows the monument as a D-shaped area enclosed by a low bank running from the south-east, around the south and west, and up through the north to the north-east, with a fosse, that is, a surrounding ditch, still discernible. A field drain running north to south has since intersected the monument at its south-western edge, as visible on a Google Earth image dated March 2018.

The site sits roughly 60 metres south of the townland boundary with Bohereenkyle, and about 165 metres south-east of the boundary with Ballynalacken. Access is across working farmland, so any visit should be undertaken with the landowner's permission and an awareness of livestock. The remains are subtle at ground level, the bank low and the fosse much reduced, but the D-shaped outline can be traced on foot if conditions are dry. The companion enclosure to the east adds an extra layer of interest, suggesting this was once a more complex settlement than the surviving earthworks alone would imply.

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Pete F
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