Ringfort (Rath), Gortmore (Glenquin By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
Somewhere in the level pasture of Gortmore, in County Limerick's Glenquin barony, a circular earthwork sits so thoroughly consumed by vegetation that its interior has effectively disappeared.
This is not a ruin in the conventional sense, with tumbled walls or legible foundations; it is an absence defined by overgrowth, a roughly 25-metre circle of dense scrub that betrays its own antiquity only by the distinctive double-ring logic of its earthen banks.
What lies beneath the brambles and growth is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in the country. Ringforts were typically circular enclosures defined by one or more banks and ditches, used as farmsteads by families of some local standing during the period broadly spanning the fifth to twelfth centuries. This particular example is a bivallate ringfort, meaning it has two concentric banks rather than the single bank more commonly encountered. A fosse, or ditch, runs between the two banks with a recorded width of around 2.6 metres, and a shallower external fosse sits beyond the outer bank. The inner bank rises nearly two metres on its outer face, which would once have made for a formidable-looking boundary even before any timber structure or hedge was added on top. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded to the national monuments database in August 2011.
The site sits on flat agricultural land, which means there is no elevated vantage point from which to appreciate its shape. Visitors trying to read the monument from ground level will find it easier to trace the outer bank first, where the drop to the external fosse gives the clearest sense of the structure's edge. The dense overgrowth that covers both banks and the interior makes close inspection difficult and somewhat impractical, but it also has the effect of preserving the earthworks from the kind of gradual erosion that grazing and ploughing can cause on more exposed sites. The concentric rings are best appreciated in late winter or early spring, when lower vegetation dies back slightly and the undulating profile of the banks becomes a little more readable against the surrounding pasture.