Ringfort (Rath), Moneyteige, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Ringforts
On a north-west-facing slope at the edge of a forestry plantation in Moneyteige, a low oval earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, showing almost nothing of what it once was.
No visible entrance survives, no trace of internal features, and the surrounding fosse, a shallow ditch that would originally have reinforced the sense of enclosure, is only faintly legible on the southern side. What remains is essentially an outline: an earthen bank roughly two and a half metres wide and less than a metre high at its tallest point, tracing an oval approximately thirty-three metres by thirty-six metres across.
This is a rath, the most common monument type in the Irish countryside. Raths are ringforts built primarily of earth rather than stone, and they served as enclosed farmsteads during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands once dotted the island, functioning as domestic enclosures for farming families, their bank and fosse providing a degree of protection for livestock as much as for people. The example at Moneyteige is modest in scale and unelaborated, with no evidence of the souterrains, underground stone-lined passages sometimes found beneath such sites, or any other subsurface features that might hint at prolonged occupation or particular status. Its oval shape rather than the more typical circular plan is a minor point of interest, though not unusual enough to draw firm conclusions about its age or the people who built it.