Ringfort (Rath), Honeypound, Co. Limerick

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Honeypound, Co. Limerick

Most ringforts occupy elevated ground, chosen for the visibility and drainage that higher land offers.

This one, sitting in low-lying wet pasture in the Honeypound townland of County Limerick, is a quiet exception. It does not command a hilltop. Instead it occupies flat, damp ground, and yet it was built with enough care and scale to suggest it mattered considerably to whoever raised it. A ringfort, or rath, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more circular earthen banks and ditches and used as a defended homestead for a family of some local standing. The Honeypound example adds an extra detail worth noting: it has not one entrance but two.

The Archaeological Survey of Ireland recorded the monument in 2000, and the figures they took give a clear sense of its proportions. The circular raised area measures 32 metres in diameter, defined by an earthen bank roughly 6.3 metres wide, standing 1.7 metres above the exterior ground level and just half a metre above the interior. Beyond the bank lies a fosse, the surrounding ditch, some 7.3 metres wide and 1.2 metres deep. Two causewayed entrances cross this fosse: one at the east, 6 metres wide, and a second at the northwest, 5.5 metres wide. Both causeways sit slightly raised above the base of the fosse. A steep change in the slope of the bank's exterior, and in the sides of the fosse itself, may point to an original stone revetment, a facing of stone used to stabilise the earthwork, though this has not been confirmed. Old field boundaries have grown up along the outer edge of the fosse, suggesting the monument has been folded into the working landscape over many centuries.

The site lies approximately 110 metres east of the townland boundary shared with Laskiltagh and Skagh. Aerial photographs taken between 2011 and 2018 show it as a circular, tree-planted earthwork, which makes it legible from above in a way it may not immediately be at ground level. A field drain running into the monument from the east floods the fosse to a depth of around 0.6 metres, so the ground underfoot will be soft in wet months, and the ditch may hold standing water for much of the year. The interior is described as level and lightly overgrown. The two causeways, though low, remain visible, and the outer bank retains enough height on its exterior face to give a clear impression of how the enclosure once presented itself to the surrounding land.

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