Ringfort (Rath), Lisnatubbrid, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lisnatubbrid, Co. Tipperary

A ringfort quietly disappearing into a working farm is not an unusual sight in the Irish countryside, but the one at Lisnatubbrid illustrates the process with particular clarity.

Raths, as these earthwork enclosures are commonly known, were typically built during the early medieval period as enclosed farmsteads, their circular banks and ditches defining a domestic space for a family and their livestock. This one sits towards the base of a south-west-facing slope on a ridge running roughly north-west to south-east, a position that would have offered some shelter and a modest vantage over the surrounding land. Today that land is still in agricultural use, and the monument finds itself hemmed in on all sides by the working routines of the farm that has grown up around it.

The roughly circular enclosure measures around 33 metres east to west, though scrub growth in the southern interior makes a north-south measurement impossible to take. What survives of the original earthen bank has been reduced in most places to a badly eroded scarp, standing at most 0.9 metres high in the south-west quadrant. A farm road running along the north-west side has levelled the bank in that sector almost completely. Field banks have been built along the north-east and south-east quadrants, absorbing the monument's edges into the modern field system. On the eastern side, one of those field banks has been broken through entirely, leaving a gap now temporarily closed with a farm gate. Silage bales are stored to the south-west of the monument, and rubbish has been tipped against the outer face of the bank on the southern side. The combination of erosion, encroachment, and casual dumping amounts to a slow but thorough dismantling of what was once a coherent structure.

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