Ringfort (Rath), Knockkelly, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Knockkelly, Co. Tipperary

A broad, grassy swell in a Tipperary pasture is not the most obvious thing to stop and examine, yet the raised ground at Knockkelly marks the outline of an early medieval ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that once numbered in the tens of thousands across Ireland.

This one is roughly circular, measuring about 57 metres north to south and nearly 63 metres east to west, making it a reasonably substantial example. What you are reading in the landscape is the ghost of a perimeter bank, now flattened to between 23 and 50 centimetres above the interior ground level but still rising over a metre on its outer face, and spread to a width of between 12 and 18 metres in places. A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, was typically a single family's fortified homestead, its earthen bank and accompanying external ditch, known as a fosse, functioning as much as a social marker and enclosure for livestock as a defensive structure.

When a survey visit was carried out in 1982, the monument was still upstanding, enclosed by its bank and outer fosse, and was formally classified as a ringfort at that time by Cahill. Since then the structure has been levelled, almost certainly by agricultural activity, though it has not been erased entirely. A probable entrance survives on the south-south-west side, where the bank can be seen to reduce on either side of the gap, a typical arrangement that allowed controlled access to the enclosed interior. The site sits on fairly level ground within broader undulating terrain, which may partly explain why it remained visible at all after the surrounding landscape was put to pasture.

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Pete F
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