Ringfort (Rath), Glenlary, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
Somewhere in the woodland along the eastern bank of a Glenlary River tributary in County Limerick, a small oval of earth quietly holds its shape against the encroachment of trees and time.
It is a rath, or ringfort, one of the most common monument types in the Irish landscape, and yet this particular example is easy to overlook entirely. Ringforts were enclosed farmsteads, typically dating from the early medieval period, built by raising a circular earthen bank around a domestic area to protect livestock and family. This one measures roughly 28 metres north to south and 20 metres east to west, dimensions modest enough that the surrounding woodland has largely swallowed it from casual view.
The site first appears in the cartographic record on the Ordnance Survey Ireland six-inch map of 1840, where it is depicted as an oval-shaped enclosure. By the time the 25-inch edition was produced in 1897, surveyors were recording the boundary in more specific terms, noting a scarp running from the south-west around to the north and east, with a field boundary completing the circuit from east back to the south-west. A second earthwork has been recorded roughly 350 metres to the south-east, suggesting that this stretch of the Glenlary valley was once more actively settled than its current wooded quiet implies. The site was compiled and uploaded to the national record by Martin Fitzpatrick in October 2021.
For anyone attempting to locate it, the rath sits on the eastern bank of a tributary stream, with the Glenlary River itself running approximately 100 metres further to the east. Satellite imagery captured between 2011 and 2013 shows the monument as a circular patch of denser tree cover, the kind of subtle signature that ringforts often leave on aerial photographs when the earthworks themselves are obscured at ground level. Access through the woodland is likely to be easier in late autumn or winter, when undergrowth has died back and the scarp defining the enclosure edge is more legible underfoot. The defining feature to look for is the change in ground level where the old bank survives, a low but perceptible rise that marks the boundary between what was once inside and outside a working early medieval farmstead.