Ringfort (Rath), Loughvella, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
What survives at Loughvella is only half a ringfort, and that incompleteness is precisely what makes it worth attention.
A later field wall, running east to west, has truncated the enclosure, cutting away everything south of it, so that what remains is a D-shaped platform rather than the roughly circular form these earthworks typically take. The interior measures about 32 metres east to west and 22 metres north to south, and the surrounding earthen bank, between two and a half and four metres wide, rises only around a metre above the interior ground level. Whitethorn bushes follow the line of the bank from west to east, a common enough sight on these old boundaries, where the thorns were either planted deliberately or simply colonised the undisturbed earthwork over centuries. There is no visible fosse, the defensive ditch that usually runs outside a bank of this kind, and no obvious entrance gap survives.
A rath is an earthen ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that tens of thousands of farming families in early medieval Ireland, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, built as their primary settlement and place of livestock enclosure. This one sits at the foot of a gentle north-west-facing slope overlooking the Claureen River, about 140 metres to the north-west, a placement that reflects the practical logic of the period: proximity to water, a degree of natural shelter, and a commanding view of the immediate landscape. Traces of a stone wall are visible on the bank at the western side, and possibly elsewhere, suggesting the earthwork may once have been reinforced with dry-stone walling. About 70 metres to the north-east lies a cashel, a related but distinct monument type in which the enclosing boundary is built entirely of stone rather than earth. The proximity of the two suggests this corner of County Clare was a focus of early settlement activity, with different building traditions perhaps reflecting different periods of use or the preferences of different households.