Ringfort (Rath), Lowesgreen, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Ringforts
A ringfort sitting in open pasture in County Tipperary, this one holds its shape with more conviction than most.
Where many such earthworks have been reduced to little more than a gentle swell in a field, the rath at Lowesgreen retains a multi-layered defensive arrangement: a main earthen bank, an inner fosse, a second bank, and traces of an outer fosse and outer bank beyond that. Ringforts, sometimes called raths when they are earthen rather than stone, were the typical enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, broadly dating from around the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Most were single-banked. The presence here of what appears to be two or even three concentric lines of earthwork suggests a site of some local significance, since the effort of construction would have been considerably greater.
The enclosure is roughly sub-circular, measuring approximately 40 metres north to south and 45 metres east to west, with a level interior. The main bank still rises to an external height of around two and a half metres in places, though it is reduced to a scarped slope on the north-eastern and south-eastern arc. A breach just over four metres wide on the eastern side is likely the original entrance. The inner fosse, a defensive ditch separating the main and inner banks, is twelve metres wide and nearly two metres deep, and it still holds water on its southern and western sections, giving it a quiet, half-alive quality even today. The outer fosse, by contrast, has been mostly infilled. The site slopes gently downward to the north and east, a detail worth noting when trying to read the earthworks from the ground. Two further sites lie close by: another enclosure roughly 300 metres to the north-north-east, and a castle with its own associated enclosure about 550 metres to the east-north-east, hinting at a landscape that was, across different centuries, repeatedly chosen for settlement and defence.