Ringforts in Ireland

The Celts came to Ireland from Central Europe sometime before 400 BC and brought with them skills in iron technology as well as the distinctive Celtic language. Weapons and some utensils were then made from iron, some of which can be seen today in the National Museum of Ireland. Society, at that time, was tribal and rural, with farming the chief source of livelihood. People lived in small thatched huts erected in lakes and in ringforts.

A ringfort is a roughly circular enclosure of up to sixty metres in diameter constructed by a rampart of stone, or of earth with an external fosse, or with earth and stone. Ringforts were the habitation-sites of at least the better off Irish farmers from the Early Iron Age up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Radiocarbon datings from ringforts which have been excavated indicate that the majority belong to the Early Christian Period, approximately AD 400 to 1200. Each ringfort was inhabited by a single family unit. There are two broad classes of ringfort, an earthen fort, known as a ráth or lios in Irish, and a stone-built fort, known as a caiseal or cathair in Irish. The word dún is also applied to a fort, especially a promontory fort, built on land naturally defended by cliffs on all but one side. A hill-fort is a ringfort which encircles the summit of a hill with its defences tending to follow the contour. Ringforts are by far the most common of all the archaeological monuments to be seen on the Irish landscape, with up to forty thousand marked on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of the country.

Most ringforts have one bank (univallate) and a fosse; some have two (bivallate) and a few have three (trivallate), but rarely more. The number of banks may have been status symbols for the inhabitants of the ringforts, with only the affluent having triple-ramparted sites. Ringforts were the forerunners of the present farmsteads. An enclosure contained a farmer’s main dwelling, some out-buildings for storage and for farm animals at night, to protect them from cattle-raiding, which was common at the time. There was only one entrance to the enclosure in each ringfort. Timber-houses were very common in pre-medieval Ireland, but when timber became scarce during the medieval period, stone and clay were used, and the foundations of stone-built huts can be seen in many ringforts today, but those constructed entirely with timber have disappeared. Inhabitants of ringforts lived in a self-sufficient economy, providing their own food by farming, animal husbandry, hunting and fishing; their clothing by spinning and weaving wool, as well as making their own agricultural implements and household utensils. Ringforts are some of the many ancient monuments to enjoy in the Irish countryside.

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