Ringfort (Rath), Donard Demesne, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Ringforts
Most ringforts, those circular or oval enclosures that dot the Irish countryside in their thousands, were built with a single bank and ditch, enough to mark territory, shelter livestock, and signal a household's presence in the early medieval landscape.
The rath at Donard Demesne in County Wicklow is a more deliberate construction than that. It is trivallate, meaning it is enclosed not by one bank but by three concentric ones, each with its own accompanying fosse, the flat-bottomed ditches still clearly readable in the ground. That degree of layered defence, or perhaps social display, places it among a relatively rare category of Irish ringfort, and the condition in which it survives makes it all the more worth attention.
The site sits on level ground at a break in a gentle north-west-facing slope, and its overall dimensions are substantial. The innermost enclosure measures roughly 27 metres by 23.5 metres, defined by an earthen bank topped with a stone wall some four metres wide and standing to around one and a half metres. Beyond that inner bank lies a flat-bottomed fosse, then a second bank, then a wider berm of level ground, and then the outermost bank, which gives the whole complex a pronounced oval shape stretching to about 62 metres by 55 metres. That widening berm between the outer two banks, ranging from three metres on the south-west to fourteen metres on the north, lends the monument an asymmetrical quality that is easy to miss on plan but quite tangible when walking the ground. The entrance is at the north-east, where gaps in the inner and outermost banks align with causeways across the fosses, and a small cuspate, or pointed, additional bank feature survives within the inner enclosure, adding a further layer of complexity to the approach. The middle bank does not survive at the entrance, though it is otherwise well preserved. The monument has been under a preservation order since 1940.