Ringfort (Rath), Rathgallen, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Ringforts
Something odd is happening to the earthworks at Rathgallen.
A ringfort, the circular enclosed farmstead that was the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically presents a clear sequence of concentric features: a raised inner bank, a fosse or ditch, and sometimes a further outer bank. Here, on one side of the site, that familiar layering has partially collapsed into a single wide, flat-topped berm, a shelf of earth roughly ten metres across, its fresh grass cover suggesting the change is comparatively recent rather than the slow subsidence of centuries. On the opposite side, the original two-bank arrangement with its intervening fosse remains legible, which is what makes the contrast so curious. The site sits in gently undulating Tipperary pasture, occupying a broadly level area with a soft downslope to the north, east, and south, its raised circular platform measuring around 45 metres in diameter.
The outer edge of the monument is marked by mature thorn trees following the line of a wide outer fosse, which runs from the south-east around through the south and west to the north-west. The interior banks, where they survive in their original form on the west-south-west to north-west arc, include an earthen bank standing about two metres high on its exterior face and a flat-bottomed fosse between it and the berm. A possible entrance has been identified at the west-north-west, a common placement in Irish ringforts, though the overgrowth makes it difficult to confirm. The interior, which appears to slope downward toward the north-north-east, is currently inaccessible even from the most open part of the site. Nearby, a mound sits approximately 135 metres to the south-west, and a second ringfort is intervisible about 315 metres to the south-south-east, suggesting this was once a well-settled corner of the landscape.
Access is limited to the south-east quadrant, where a farm track runs at a tangent to the southern edge and a round cattle feeder sits just outside the ringfort boundary. The monument is fenced off from livestock, though the interior remains heavily overgrown. The outer fosse and the berm section are most clearly read from the south-east approach, where the flat-topped feature stands out against the surrounding pasture, particularly when the surrounding growth is lower.