Ringfort (Rath), Killoran, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Killoran, Co. Tipperary

On the western slope of a low ridge in County Tipperary, an early medieval ringfort quietly carries the traces of two quite different eras of use.

What makes this particular example at Killoran worth a second look is a limekiln, a small stone structure once used to burn limestone and produce agricultural lime, built directly into the eastern face of the bank. It is an odd pairing: a bank that may be over a thousand years old, pressed into service as the wall of a post-medieval industrial feature.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the most common settlement type in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead within one or more earthen banks. The Killoran example is a well-preserved specimen, with a roughly circular raised area measuring thirty-one metres east to west. The enclosing bank of earth and stone, two metres wide and standing up to two metres high on its exterior face, remains largely intact and is now lined with trees. No original entrance feature is visible at ground level. The current thinking is that the site was probably reused as a tree-ring at some point in the nineteenth century, and it was likely during this same period that the limekiln was inserted into the bank's eastern side. The bank, in other words, was not merely preserved by later occupants; it was put back to work.

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