Ringfort (Rath), Knockanduff, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Ringforts
Walking across the pasture at Knockanduff in County Wexford, you would have no idea that anything lay beneath your feet.
The ground gives nothing away; no raised earthwork, no dip or hollow, no obvious sign of human marking. Yet from the air, the soil tells a different story. A set of three concentric fosse-features, the term for the ditches that once defined and defended an enclosed settlement, resolves itself clearly in aerial photographs as a cropmark, the faint differential in how crops or grasses grow above disturbed or compacted subsoil. What appears invisible at ground level becomes legible only when seen from above.
The innermost of the three enclosures is roughly circular, with a diameter of around 30 metres, a typical scale for an early medieval ringfort or rath, the kind of enclosed farmstead that once dotted the Irish countryside in enormous numbers. The outermost enclosure is noticeably different in shape, described as D-shaped, stretching approximately 90 metres on its northeast to southwest axis and around 50 metres across. This asymmetry in the outer enclosure is itself unusual and may reflect the particular topography of the slight northeast-facing slope on which the site sits, or adaptations made during different phases of use. A road bank running northeast to southwest cuts across and truncates the enclosing features at the southeast, meaning part of the original layout has been lost to a later routeway at some point in the site's long afterlife.
