Ringfort (Rath), Sluggary, Co. Limerick

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Sluggary, Co. Limerick

A ringfort sits on a low hill in Sluggary, County Limerick, largely swallowed by scrub and separated from the present day by the concrete wall of a large housing estate to its east.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, are roughly circular enclosures built during the early medieval period, typically used as farmsteads and defended by earthen banks and ditches. This one has two concentric banks, which marks it out as a more substantial example than the average single-banked rath, and its sub-oval footprint measures approximately fifty metres north to south and sixty metres east to west, dimensions still legible on the 1924 Ordnance Survey six-inch map despite centuries of neglect.

When archaeologist Elizabeth Shee Twohig excavated the site across two seasons in 1973 and 1974, she found evidence that the outer bank had once been faced with a wall of stones, most of which had collapsed suddenly and cleanly into the ditch below, suggesting a structural failure rather than a slow deterioration. Beneath the vegetation and disturbed earth, she uncovered a complex pattern of post holes and pits, and the charred remains of a wattle-built structure that had apparently burned where it stood. A cist-like hearth, that is a box-shaped stone-lined feature, was found in one area and contained a significant quantity of burnt material. Among the finds retrieved was a bone comb, a small object that carries an oddly domestic weight when you consider it lying in the ash of a destroyed building.

The site sits on unused, undulating land and is not formally managed or signposted. Dense scrub vegetation covers much of the monument, which makes the earthworks difficult to read on the ground even when you are standing within them. Anyone visiting should expect rough going underfoot and limited visibility of the banks themselves. The housing estate wall serves as an unlikely landmark for orientation. There is no particular season that improves access dramatically, though winter, when the scrub has thinned a little, may offer slightly clearer sightlines across the interior.

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