Ringfort (Rath), Finniterstown, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
A low earthen ring sits in level pasture at Finniterstown in County Limerick, easy to overlook from a distance and easier still to dismiss as a quirk of the field.
What it actually represents is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands of these survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation, but each one tends to accumulate its own particular set of oddities, and this example has a few worth noting.
The enclosure is roughly circular, around thirty metres in diameter, defined by an earthen bank that stands about 0.6 metres high on the interior and somewhat taller, around 0.9 metres, on the outside. That difference in height is typical of the form; earth was dug from a circuit around the bank and piled inward, creating a modest but meaningful boundary. What makes this site a little more interesting than the basic description suggests is a short stretch of earthen bank at the northwest, roughly fourteen metres long, which runs outward from the main enclosure at a tangent in a northeasterly direction. There is a corresponding gap through both banks near their junction, suggesting this outwork may have functioned as a kind of protected approach or funnel to an entrance. A second gap, about 1.5 metres wide, pierces the enclosing bank to the southwest. Whether these two openings were original or later modifications is not recorded in the available survey notes, compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011.
The site sits in ordinary farmland and the interior is largely obscured by dense overgrowth, so arriving with an expectation of open, readable ground will likely lead to frustration. The earthen bank itself is the clearest thing to trace, though it has been abutted by more recent field walls at the north and east, which complicates any attempt to read the original circuit cleanly. The northwest outwork is the feature most worth seeking out, as the relationship between its terminal end and the gap in the main bank is the kind of spatial detail that becomes surprisingly legible once you are standing on the ground rather than reading a description of it.