Ringfort (Rath), Moymore, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
Sitting on a low rise in the middle of waterlogged Co. Clare pasture, this oval ringfort is a quietly odd sight: a double-banked enclosure that appears to have been slowly swallowed, on one side, by a field drain that probably did not exist when the place was built.
The southern end of its inner bank has been reduced to little more than a scarp, and the outer ditch fades out altogether in that direction, the whole southern arc seemingly truncated by a post-medieval drainage channel now carrying a small stream.
A rath, to use the Irish term, is an earthen ringfort of the early medieval period, typically associated with a single farming household and its enclosing defences. This one is bivallate, meaning it has two concentric banks rather than one, which may indicate a higher-status occupant or simply reflect local building traditions. The structure measures roughly 66 metres east to west and 47 metres north to south, with a flat-bottomed fosse, or ditch, running between the two earthen banks. The inner bank still stands to between two and two and a third metres on its exterior face in places, which is a respectable survival given the general condition of the site. A gap in both the inner and outer banks at the north-north-west is possibly the original entrance, though there is no surviving causeway across the fosse to confirm it. The monument was already being recorded when the Ordnance Survey produced its six-inch maps in the 1840s, and it appears again on the 1916 edition, suggesting it has sat in this same improbable hollow for a very long time.
The interior is heavily overgrown, but a low mound in the south-western sector may represent the collapse of an earlier building. More visibly, a small drystone structure of probable post-medieval date has been incorporated into the fabric of the outer bank on the northern side, a reminder that these earthworks were often put to practical use long after whatever social world produced them had dissolved.