Ringfort (Rath), Kisha, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Ringforts
At Kisha in County Wexford, there is a ringfort that cannot quite be seen from the ground.
No earthen bank rises above the surrounding fields, no obvious enclosure announces itself to a passing walker. What survives instead is a ghostly circular outline, roughly thirty metres across in both directions, that shows up only from the air, picked out by the differential growth of crops above buried soil disturbances. These cropmarks, the faint signatures of ancient earthworks that no longer protrude above the surface, are among the quieter ways that the Irish landscape holds its history.
Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a circular area defined by one or more earthen banks and external ditches called fosses. They served as farmsteads, enclosing a family's home and livestock against both animal predators and human rivals. At Kisha, aerial photographs reveal that at least two fosses were originally cut into the ground here: one running from the south-west around through north to east, and a second outer fosse to the north and north-east. The presence of a double fosse is a detail worth noting, as it suggests the enclosure may have been of some significance to whoever constructed it, a more elaborate arrangement than the single-ditch examples that make up the majority of surviving raths. The interior, approximately circular, may preserve a slightly sunken area, which could reflect the long-term settling of deposits within the original enclosure.