Ringfort (Rath), Kilmaloge, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kilmaloge, Co. Tipperary

A ringfort in Tipperary that has had part of its enclosing bank literally quarried away might sound like a curiosity, but it also tells you something about how these monuments have fared across the centuries.

This one at Kilmaloge sits just off the crest of a north-south ridge on a west-facing slope, and what survives is a roughly circular earthwork about 22.5 metres across, its bank still standing to an external height of around 0.61 metres in the sections that remain intact. Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead within an earthen bank and ditch. They number in the tens of thousands across the country, and yet each one carries its own particular history of survival or attrition.

The quarrying that has eaten into the western quadrant of this example was already visible on Ordnance Survey maps produced in 1904 and 1905, which means the damage predates those editions and may well go back further. What remains on the western side drops away in a very sheer face to the base of a deep quarry, its edge now softened by encroaching scrub. The rest of the bank survives with a crest width of around two metres and a base width of just over three metres, modest but legible dimensions for an earthwork of this type. Tillage fields press right up to the outer edge of the bank on the southern and eastern sides, which keeps the ground clear but also signals how little buffer the monument has from agricultural activity. A probable modern entrance, roughly 5.4 metres wide, has been made in the south-eastern quadrant, and the interior along with much of the north-western bank is now obscured by nettles, lush grass, and scrub growth.

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