Ringfort (Rath), Lurraga, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
On a prominent hill in Lurraga, Co. Clare, a double-banked ringfort sits with wide views sweeping out to the south-west, its ancient earthworks now largely consumed by gorse and bramble.
That combination, a well-preserved early medieval enclosure rendered almost inaccessible by dense vegetation, gives the site an oddly suspended quality. The structure is very nearly circular, measuring 45 metres north to south and 44.5 metres east to west, and its doubled defences are considerably more substantial than those of a typical single-banked rath. A rath is a type of ringfort defined by earthen banks and a surrounding ditch, and was most commonly used as a farmstead enclosure during the early medieval period in Ireland. Here, the inner bank rises to an external height of two metres, flat-topped and steep-sided, while between it and the outer bank runs a flat-bottomed fosse, or ditch, measuring up to 6.1 metres across at its base. The outer bank, though lower and more rounded, adds a further layer of enclosure that would have made this a notably well-defended or high-status site.
The fort has been known to cartographers for a long time. It was marked on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1842 and 1920, suggesting it was a visible and recognisable feature of the landscape across successive generations. By 1996 it had been formally catalogued as an enclosure in the Record of Monuments and Places, which provides it a degree of legal protection. Some later activity has left its mark on the site: a field wall was at some point built directly onto the outer bank, running from the north-north-west to the north-north-east, and an agricultural shed now stands immediately to that same side. Inside the enclosure, the ground rises slightly towards the centre before sloping gently to the south-east, though what lies beneath the overgrowth remains unknown. The interior appears featureless to the eye, but the vegetation makes any close inspection difficult, and it is possible that subsurface features have simply never been recorded.