Ringfort (Rath), Kilpipe, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Ringforts
On a north-facing slope in the south Wicklow parish of Kilpipe, the ground preserves the quiet outline of an early medieval farmstead that most walkers would pass without a second glance.
What looks from a distance like a low, uneven ridge is in fact a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed settlement built and occupied primarily between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Ringforts were the everyday domestic sites of farming families across early medieval Ireland, and several tens of thousands of them survive in varying degrees of preservation.
This one is oval in plan, measuring roughly 35.5 metres east to west and 29 metres north to south, dimensions that would have enclosed a modest but workable farmyard. The boundary is formed by a shaly earthen bank, about four metres wide and standing between 0.6 and 1.3 metres high, with a shallow external fosse, essentially a drainage ditch, running around the outside. The fosse here is only about three metres wide and barely a tenth of a metre deep, which suggests either that it was never especially substantial or that centuries of weathering and agricultural activity have reduced it considerably. The original entrance, nearly three metres wide, faces the east-north-east, an orientation common in Irish ringforts and sometimes associated with practical considerations such as morning light and prevailing winds. No internal features have been recorded, meaning the surface evidence for whatever structures once stood inside, houses, outbuildings, storage pits, has not survived or has yet to be identified.