Ringfort (Rath), Huntstown, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Ringforts
By the time anyone thought to record it properly, most of this ringfort in Huntstown, Co. Kilkenny had already vanished.
What survived into the mid-twentieth century was only the north-east quadrant of what had once been a circular earthen enclosure, its inner bank still thick with thorn trees and showing signs of having been disturbed by digging. A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is a roughly circular enclosure bounded by an earthen bank and ditch, used as a farmstead during the early medieval period in Ireland. At Huntstown, even that partial remnant did not last.
The Ordnance Survey's first edition six-inch map, produced in 1839, recorded a D-shaped enclosure at the site measuring approximately 50 metres on its north-west to south-east axis and around 17 metres across the shorter span, with a field boundary running along the western side. Surveyors at the time may have been seeing only the eastern portion of a much larger original structure. By the 1900 revision of the same map series, the enclosure had been omitted entirely, suggesting significant deterioration or clearance had occurred in the intervening decades. A 1951 description confirms what little remained: an outer ditch, an inner bank, thorn growth, and evidence of interference. Shortly afterwards, whatever was left was removed as part of the Land Project, a mid-century government programme that incentivised the improvement and reclamation of agricultural land across Ireland, and which claimed a considerable number of earthworks and monuments in the process.
