Ringfort (Rath), Newtown (Cloonagh By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
In a field of reclaimed pasture in County Limerick, a low oval mound rises out of the grass with a quiet insistence that the surrounding farmland tries hard to ignore.
It sits 330 metres south-west of Newtown House, and from certain angles, particularly from the east and south, you can still read the logic of it: a raised platform, a surrounding ditch, an outer bank. From other directions the earthworks have been so worn down that the whole thing flattens into the landscape, almost indistinguishable from ordinary agricultural ground.
A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is an enclosed farmstead of early medieval Ireland, typically circular or oval in plan, defined by one or more banks and ditches. This one was recorded as early as the 1897 edition of the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, where it appeared as a raised oval platform with a scarp, fosse, and outer bank visible on its eastern and southern sides. By the time O'Dwyer described it in 1964, the platform measured roughly 180 feet in diameter and stood some 10 feet high, encircled by a ditch approximately 15 feet wide, with the outer bank absent on the south-east side where the surrounding field level had risen to meet the earthwork. When the Archaeological Survey of Ireland surveyed it in 2007, the dimensions were more precisely recorded: the platform runs 36 metres north to south and 44 metres east to west, with an inner bank still reaching an external height of around 1.15 metres in places. The fosse, the defensive or drainage ditch that rings the platform, measures over 11 metres wide. A causewayed entrance gap, 5.5 metres across, sits at the north-west, though surveyors noted it may be a modern opening rather than the original approach. A stream runs 40 metres to the south-west, a proximity that would have made practical sense to whoever chose this spot.
The monument sits in working farmland, and a farm track running roughly north-north-west to south-south-east passes about 30 metres to the west. A field boundary that once ran along the northern edge has since been removed. The earthworks are most legible from the east through to the west via the south, where the fosse and outer bank remain visible; the northern arc has been reduced largely to a scarp. Aerial photographs taken by the ASI in September 2002 and satellite imagery from subsequent years show the platform clearly from above, which is often the best way to grasp its full oval shape. On the ground, patience and a slow walk around the perimeter rewards the eye with subtle shifts in ground level that the casual glance misses entirely.