Ringfort (Rath), Knocklong East, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
A ringfort sits on the south bank of the Camoge River in Knocklong East, Co. Limerick, its ancient earthworks now partly sliced through by a modern access road serving a water treatment plant.
That collision of the early medieval and the utilitarian is oddly fitting for a site that has otherwise slipped quietly into its surroundings, the central platform grown over with trees and the whole monument easy to overlook from the outside world.
Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used to protect a farmstead and its livestock. This particular example was recorded on the 1897 edition of the Ordnance Survey Ireland 25-inch map, which shows a raised roughly circular platform of around 24 metres in diameter, defined by a scarp with a fosse and bank running from the northeast around through south to the northwest, and an outer fosse with a scarp extending from the northeast around to the southwest. The fosse is the defensive ditch that would originally have encircled the enclosure. By the time satellite imagery was captured between 2011 and 2013, the overall outline of the tree-covered monument had grown to an apparent diameter of around 67 metres, the canopy tracing the form of the earthworks beneath.
The site sits on reclaimed grassland, and the Camoge River running along its northern edge also marks the boundary between the townlands of Knocklong East and Ballincarroona. That boundary function is itself a reminder of how ancient features were absorbed into later administrative geographies. The access road to the water treatment plant now cuts across the earthwork on an east-west axis at its northern end, with associated buildings visible immediately to the east. Anyone visiting should expect a working infrastructure environment rather than an open field, and the monument itself is largely obscured by tree cover. The clearest impression of its scale and layout is currently best gained through Google Earth orthoimagery rather than from the ground.