Ringfort (Rath), Longford, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Longford, Co. Tipperary

A road cuts straight through the middle of this ancient enclosure in the Longford townland of north County Tipperary, dividing what was once a coherent structure into two unequal halves.

That road was already there when the first edition Ordnance Survey was made in 1840, meaning the damage predates living memory by several generations and has long since become part of the landscape.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation, but this one presents its difficulties plainly. It sits on a north-east-facing slope above poor, rushy ground, occupying a modest natural rise that would once have offered a degree of visibility and drainage. The enclosure is roughly circular, about twenty-five metres across, and defined by an earth and stone bank around two metres wide, with an outer fosse, a defensive ditch, running along its edge. The bank itself is low, standing only about thirty to forty centimetres above the interior and exterior ground levels respectively, suggesting considerable silting and erosion over the centuries. The western half has been further damaged by modern farming practices, leaving the surviving eastern portion as the clearer remnant of the original plan.

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