Ringfort (Rath), Moneymohill, Co. Limerick

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Moneymohill, Co. Limerick

Some places earn their place in the record precisely because they have ceased to exist.

In the low-lying pasture beside the eastern bank of the White River in Moneymohill, County Limerick, there was once a rath, a type of earthen ringfort consisting of a raised circular bank enclosing a domestic area, commonly built during the early medieval period in Ireland. By the time anyone went looking for it in the field, there was nothing left to find.

The monument was recorded on the 1923 Ordnance Survey six-inch map as an embanked circular enclosure with a diameter of approximately 25 metres. Adjoining it on the south-western side was a second, similar enclosure, suggesting the two may have formed a conjoined arrangement, perhaps indicating a more complex or multi-phase settlement. Both have since been levelled. When Denis Power compiled the site record, uploaded in August 2011, the inspection note was unambiguous: no trace of the monument was evident on the ground. The companion enclosure, catalogued separately, fared no better.

For anyone visiting the area, there is little to guide the eye. The site sits in ordinary agricultural pasture, the kind of landscape that has been quietly absorbing and erasing earthworks for generations through ploughing, drainage works, and the general pressure of farming. The White River runs nearby, and the general townland of Moneymohill can be located in County Limerick without difficulty, but the precise footprint of the rath is now indistinguishable from the surrounding fields. What remains is the map entry, the catalogue number, and the knowledge that somewhere in that grass two circular enclosures once stood close enough to share a boundary wall.

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Pete F
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