Ringfort, Grange, Co. Dublin

Co. Dublin |

Ringforts

Ringfort, Grange, Co. Dublin

There is a ringfort in Grange, County Dublin, that you will almost certainly never see, even if you walk directly across it.

No earthworks survive above ground, no obvious dip or rise betrays what lies beneath, and the surrounding tillage fields offer nothing to the passing eye. The site exists, in any practical sense, only from the air.

Ringforts are the most common monument type in the Irish archaeological landscape, roughly circular enclosures bounded by one or more banks and ditches, used primarily as farmsteads during the early medieval period, broadly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. This particular example at Grange was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837, suggesting it retained some surface presence at that point, though whatever remained has since been lost to agricultural activity. What survives is revealed through cropmarks, the differential growth of crops over buried features that becomes visible when photographed from above under the right conditions, typically during dry summers when shallow soil over buried ditches produces paler or more stunted growth. An aerial photograph taken for the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography, reference AOZ 51, shows a subcircular enclosure measuring approximately 55 metres east to west and 45 metres north to south, along with traces of associated field systems. A second enclosure cropmark appears roughly ten metres to the west, hinting that the immediate area supported a more complex pattern of early settlement than the surface now suggests. The undulating tillage that surrounds the site is, in a sense, both the reason the site has vanished and the reason it can still be read.

For anyone curious enough to seek it out, satellite imagery on platforms such as Bing offers a reasonable substitute for a dedicated aerial survey, and the cropmarks were confirmed visible there as recently as January 2015. On the ground, there is nothing to locate or examine in any conventional sense, no bank, no entrance gap, no stone-faced ditch. The value here is less in visiting than in knowing how to look, and understanding that the tillage fields of north County Dublin conceal, just beneath their surface, the outlines of a farming landscape more than a thousand years old.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Ringfort, Grange, Co. Dublin. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 50 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.