Ringfort (Rath), Teerovannan, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Teerovannan, Co. Clare

Something about this low hillock in County Clare resists easy reading.

What survives of the ringfort at Teerovannan is only half of what was once there, a semi-circular arc of steep earthen scarp running roughly south to north, about 48 metres across at its longest axis. A ringfort, or rath, was the most common form of enclosed rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically a circular area bounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches, enclosing a farmstead and its outbuildings. Here, though, the full circuit no longer exists, and one of the more quietly puzzling questions the site raises is where the boundary originally ran. A low, curvilinear rise to the north-northeast looks, at first glance, like the continuation of a levelled bank, but it appears to be a natural ridge. The ground then drops sharply into a small valley on the northern side, making it genuinely difficult to distinguish between what people built and what the land simply did on its own.

The 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded the monument as a more complete oval feature, approximately 53 metres on its northwest to southeast axis and 46 metres across the other way, with a trackway marking the western and northwestern edges. That earlier picture of the enclosure is now considerably altered. The scarp that remains, up to 2.65 metres high and around 6 metres wide, is largely smothered in briars and thorn thickets, and badgers have burrowed into it in places. Only a short southern section is clear enough to read as earthwork. There is no obvious trace of a fosse, the external ditch that typically accompanies a rath's bank. The interior slopes down toward the east and south; the western half is dense with vegetation, while the eastern half has been absorbed into the surrounding improved pasture. Teerovannan Castle lies about 320 metres to the west-southwest, a proximity that hints at the long, layered occupation of this particular patch of Clare landscape.

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