Ringfort (Rath), Horetown, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Ringforts
At Horetown in County Wexford, a ringfort has managed to vanish almost entirely from the surface of the land while remaining legible from the sky.
No earthwork rises from the field; instead, what survives is a cropmark, a faint but measurable signature left in the soil that becomes visible on aerial photographs when growing crops respond differently over buried features than over undisturbed ground.
The mark reveals a rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular enclosure typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and associated with rural settlement and farmstead activity. This particular example sits on the crest of a north-west-facing slope along a small ridge running north-east to south-west, a position that would have offered both prospect and drainage. Two concentric ditch features define the enclosure, with an internal diameter of approximately forty metres and an external diameter of approximately sixty metres. The gap between the ditches at the north-east marks the original entrance. A ringfort enclosed by two ditches rather than one is sometimes described as a bivallate rath, and the double boundary generally suggests a more substantial or defended settlement than the single-ditched norm. The aerial photographs that preserve this evidence show the full circuit of both ditches and the alignment of the entrance with enough clarity to establish the site's plan even where the ground itself shows nothing.

