Ringfort (Rath), Kilmihil (Connello Upper By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
A low circular mound sitting quietly in a Limerick pasture might easily be mistaken for a natural rise in the ground, particularly when it is as thoroughly swallowed by vegetation as this one.
What it actually represents is something far older than the fields around it: a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the standard form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a circular enclosed area defined by earthen banks and ditches, within which a family and their livestock would have lived. Thousands survive across the country, yet each retains its own particular geometry and character.
This example, recorded as National Monument No. 538 and compiled by Denis Power, occupies a gentle west-facing slope in the townland of Kilmihil, within the old barony of Connello Upper in County Limerick. The enclosed area measures approximately thirty metres in diameter, ringed by an earthen bank that stands 0.65 metres high on both its interior and exterior faces, with an outer fosse, or ditch, roughly 1.5 metres wide and 0.35 metres deep still visible beyond it. A fosse of this kind was a standard defensive and drainage feature, the spoil from its digging typically used to raise the bank above. One further detail sets this site slightly apart: a low earthen bank runs outward from the enclosure in a broadly east-south-east direction, a radial feature whose original purpose is unclear but which may relate to an enclosure, trackway, or field boundary associated with the original farmstead. The interior of the ringfort, along with much of the enclosing bank, is now covered in dense overgrowth.
The site sits in pasture, so access would depend on landowner permission, as is the case with most field monuments of this kind in Ireland. The dense vegetation noted in the survey record means that the earthworks are unlikely to read clearly at ground level, and the bank and fosse are best appreciated by walking the perimeter rather than trying to view the interior. The outward-running bank to the east-south-east is worth looking for as a secondary feature. A visit in late winter or early spring, when ground-level vegetation has died back, would offer the clearest conditions for reading the underlying earthworks.