Ringfort (Rath), Lughinny, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lughinny, Co. Kilkenny

Tucked into the eastern slope of a valley in County Kilkenny, just above the valley floor, a circular earthwork sits in reclaimed grassland with a quiet, slightly awkward presence.

It commands fair to good views in most directions, though the rising ground to the east cuts that off abruptly, giving the site an uneven relationship with its landscape. That combination of defensive positioning and partial enclosure is characteristic of the rath, a type of ringfort once common across early medieval Ireland, typically used as a farmstead enclosure by a family of some local standing.

The earthwork is neatly proportioned. A roughly circular interior measuring thirty metres across is enclosed by an earthen bank standing about a metre high on the inside and one and a half metres on the exterior, with a crest width of two metres and an overall width of three. Outside the bank runs a wide, flat-bottomed fosse, the term for the ditch that would have been dug to supply material for the bank itself; here it measures three metres wide and sits about three quarters of a metre deep. Access was by a causewayed entrance at the north-west, meaning a strip of undug ground was left across the fosse to allow passage, a practical arrangement found at many similar sites across the country. When the site was examined in 1987, the interior was waterlogged and had been heavily churned by cattle, a reminder that many of these early medieval enclosures have survived not through any formal protection but simply because they were awkward to plough or build on. Trees had taken root along the bank and in the interior, which is a common fate for ringforts left to their own devices over the centuries.

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Pete F
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