Ringfort (Rath), Kilbreedy (Kenry By.), Co. Limerick

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kilbreedy (Kenry By.), Co. Limerick

A silage pit is not usually what you expect to find eating into the edge of an early medieval settlement, but that is precisely the situation at this ringfort in Kilbreedy, in the Kenry barony of County Limerick.

The site survives only partially, its southern extent now defined not by an ancient earthwork but by the concrete wall of a modern agricultural structure. What remains is a monument doing its best to hold on, caught between working farmland and centuries of slow encroachment.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically circular earthen banks surrounding a domestic area. This example was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1841 as an embanked circular enclosure roughly 30 metres in diameter. When surveyor Denis Power assessed it, the picture was considerably more complicated. The enclosing element survives from the north-west around to the east, defined by a scarped edge 1.5 metres high and 3.5 metres wide, with an external fosse, essentially a defensive ditch, roughly half a metre deep and just over two metres wide, and a counterscarp bank on the outer side. The roughly ovoid interior measures about 12 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west. At the eastern end, an irregular mound, probably formed from spoil dug out during the silage pit's construction, now sits where the fosse would have terminated. The western section of the enclosing element has been cut through by a north-south field boundary and is further obscured by dense overgrowth, and the counterscarp bank is clipped at the north by an east-west field boundary running across it.

The fort sits on an east-facing slope in pasture, and the surviving interior, along with much of the remaining bank, is covered by mature ash trees, which gives the site a closed, shaded quality that makes it feel more intact than a precise reading of the earthworks would suggest. Field boundaries, overgrowth, and the silage pit together mean that a complete circuit of the monument is not really possible. What can be appreciated is the surviving arc of bank and fosse running from the north-west to the east, where the earthwork dimensions are clear enough to give a genuine sense of the original structure. The site is not signposted or managed for visitors, and access would depend on permission from the landowner.

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Pete F
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