Ringfort (Rath), Killoskehan, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Killoskehan, Co. Tipperary

Some archaeological sites survive as ruins, or earthworks, or at least as a depression in a field that rewards a careful eye.

The ringfort at Killoskehan in County Tipperary does not even offer that much. Ploughed flat at some point in recent decades, it is now entirely invisible at ground level, surviving only in the written record and, presumably, in whatever disturbed traces remain beneath the soil.

Before it was lost, the site was recorded by Stout in 1984 as a roughly circular enclosure, around twenty metres across on its north-south axis, defined by two concentric earth and stone banks with a fosse, or defensive ditch, running between them. A gap of about three metres on the eastern side likely marked the original entrance. This kind of enclosure, known in Irish as a rath, was the standard form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically housing a farmstead and its associated outbuildings within a raised earthen perimeter. The double-bank arrangement at Killoskehan would have been a moderately substantial example of the type. The site sits on a steep east-facing slope in a mountainous part of north Tipperary, a location that would have offered both elevation and a commanding view across the valley below, practical considerations that early farmers understood well.

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