Ringfort (Rath), Shanballyduff, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Shanballyduff, Co. Tipperary

At Shanballyduff in County Tipperary, a ringfort sits quietly in pasture on the upper edge of a gently east-facing slope, its oval outline still legible in the landscape after more than a thousand years.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were enclosed farmsteads typical of the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, where a family and their livestock lived within a raised earthen bank for protection and status. What makes this one worth attention is the relative completeness of its concentric defences: not just one bank and ditch, but traces of a second outer bank surviving on the south-east to south-west arc, giving a sense of how layered and deliberate these enclosures could be.

The oval interior measures approximately 28 metres east to west and 23 metres north to south, defined by an earthen bank between roughly five and eight metres wide. Beyond it lies a fosse, a flat-bottomed or V-shaped ditch intended to heighten the effective height of the bank above it, here surviving best along the south-east to south-west and north-east to south-east portions of the circuit. Further out again are the remains of an outer bank, now largely levelled, but still traceable along the south-western arc. A possible entrance gap on the east-south-east side, about five metres wide overall, aligns neatly with the slope dropping away to the east, a typical arrangement that would have made approach and departure practical for people and animals alike. Extending from the monument at the north-east are levelled remains of a former field boundary running roughly east to west, a reminder that this landscape was shaped and reshaped by agricultural use long after the ringfort itself fell out of occupation.

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Pete F
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