Ringfort (Rath), Lisvarrinane, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lisvarrinane, Co. Tipperary

On the southern slopes of Slievenamuck mountain in County Tipperary, an early medieval ringfort sits largely forgotten beneath a tangle of brambles and dead wood, its interior now further obscured by planted conifers.

Roughly oval in plan, it measures approximately 47 metres north to south and 55 metres east to west, making it a reasonably substantial example of its type. A ringfort, or rath, was typically a circular or near-circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank, used as a farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. This one retains its enclosing bank, which is around four metres wide, with the outer face rising to just under eighty centimetres. There is also a faint depression that might represent an outer fosse, the shallow ditch that often ran outside such a bank, though the irregularity here may simply be the result of cattle pressing against the earthwork for shelter over many generations.

The setting adds to the quiet strangeness of the place. The Aherlow River runs about a hundred metres to the south through wet, rushy pasture, and the monument sits on a south-facing lower slope of Slievenamuck, oriented to catch whatever warmth the valley offers. Old Ordnance Survey maps record two trackways associated with the site, one running roughly east to west along its southern side, another along its northern edge. The southern track appears to have fallen entirely out of use, while the northern one has been absorbed into a field boundary that now cuts along the eastern side of the ringfort on a northwest to southeast alignment. The landscape, in other words, has quietly reorganised itself around the monument, folding former paths into hedgerows and pasture boundaries, leaving the enclosure itself marooned in vegetation.

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Pete F
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