Ringfort (Rath), Racecourse, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Racecourse, Co. Tipperary

A townland boundary runs clean through this ringfort, slicing off its eastern arc so that the enclosure technically belongs to two separate parcels of land.

That kind of administrative division is not unusual in Ireland, but here the split has left one portion so worn and neglected that only the faintest surface trace remains where a substantial earthwork once stood. The rest of the site, sitting quietly in pasture on a gentle west-facing slope in County Tipperary, survives in considerably better shape.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, are the most common archaeological monument type in Ireland, built predominantly during the early medieval period as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or small community. They typically consist of a circular or oval bank, sometimes accompanied by a fosse, the ditch dug to provide material for the bank itself. This example is sub-oval in plan, measuring roughly 43 metres north to south and 42 metres east to west. The earthen bank is best preserved along its southern and south-western arc, where it reaches an external height of around 1.5 metres and a width of approximately 9 metres. Elsewhere, particularly from the south-west around to the north, it has been reduced considerably, surviving as a low bank only half a metre or so above the interior. An external fosse, about 8.5 metres wide and nearly a metre deep, remains clearly defined on the south-eastern and south-western sides, though it has entirely disappeared around the northern and western arcs. A gap roughly 4 metres wide, cut through the bank on the north side, appears to mark the original entrance.

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