Ringfort (Rath), Peppardstown, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Peppardstown, Co. Tipperary

There is a ringfort in Peppardstown, County Tipperary, that you cannot see.

Walk across the field where it once stood and the ground gives nothing away; no earthwork, no raised bank, no obvious break in the surface. What remains is visible only from the air, as a circular cropmark, the ghost of two concentric ditches printed into the soil by the differential growth of whatever happens to be growing above them that season.

The site was once substantial. The Ordnance Survey map of 1903 to 1904 recorded it as a clearly defined circular enclosure with an internal diameter of roughly 35 to 40 metres and an overall diameter of around 100 metres, making it a bivallate ringfort, that is, one enclosed by two banks and two ditches rather than the single circuit more commonly seen. A tertiary road ran along its western edge. As recently as 1975, a field inspection recorded the monument in good condition, with both banks and both ditches still legible. Sometime between that inspection and 1995, the earthworks were levelled, most likely by repeated ploughing. Aerial photographs taken by the Ordnance Survey in 1995 and again in August 1996 confirmed the loss, showing only the cropmark pattern where the banks had been. A second bivallate ringfort of the same type survives approximately 300 metres to the south, which makes the disappearance of this one a sharper absence.

One physical trace does persist at ground level, though it is easy to overlook. The plough soil across the area of the monument is noticeably stonier than the surrounding field, a quiet signature of the disturbed subsoil beneath. It is the kind of detail that rewards attention but reveals almost nothing to a passing eye.

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Pete F
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