Ringfort (Rath), Cloghaunnatinny, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Cloghaunnatinny, Co. Clare

In the undulating farmland of Cloghaunnatinny in County Clare, a faint circular rise in the ground marks the outline of a structure that is probably well over a thousand years old.

It is easy to miss, not because it has been buried or built over, but because the land has simply absorbed it. The earthen bank that once defined this ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically associated with early medieval Ireland, has merged so thoroughly with a later field boundary that the two are now almost indistinguishable from one another.

The site takes the form of a roughly circular grass-covered area, measuring approximately 31 metres north to south and 29 metres east to west. The defining bank, which runs along a north-north-west to east-south-east line, is itself grass-covered and reads in the landscape less as a monument than as a slight thickening of the ground. On the interior side it rises only around 15 centimetres; on the exterior, between half a metre and just under a metre. Where the original bank gives way to what is now an overgrown field boundary, the earthwork becomes a little more pronounced, reaching heights of up to 1.2 metres. There is no visible fosse, the defensive ditch that typically accompanies a ringfort on its outer edge, and no discernible original entrance. Whether the fosse was never dug, has simply silted and grassed over, or was deliberately removed at some point during the land's agricultural history is not clear. The absence of a visible entrance is equally ambiguous; many ringfort entrances survive only as slight gaps in a bank, and here the bank itself is barely legible.

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Pete F
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