TreeAlive
‹ Sites and Monuments Record, Ireland

Sites and Monuments Record · Ireland

Castle - ringwork

Ashfort, County Limerick, Ireland

Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915) covering the location of Castle - ringwork, Ashfort, County Limerick, with a pin at the register's coordinates
Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915), covering this location. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The pin is ours, placed from the register's coordinates.

The record

Townland
Ashfort
County
Limerick
Country
Ireland
Latest-edition OS map
Hachured (1924)
Coordinates
52.60828, -8.66822
SMR number
LI013-076----

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

4 historical maps cover this location, the earliest the 1790 map "Composite: Ireland." (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Historical maps covering this location

  • 1790 · Composite: Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1869 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1891 · Ireland 16 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1904 · Sheet 13. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

Get directions ↗

This record in the National Monuments Service's Historic Environment Viewer ↗

The National Monuments Service's description

This monument was excavated in 1997 and 1998 by Audrey Gahan, ADS (97E0285), in advance of the N20/N21 Adare-Anacotty road scheme. She described the monument as c. 30m diam, with a still extant bank measuring in places 1m above present ground level. Sections excavated through the ditch showed it to be roughly U-shaped and on average 4.2m wide and 1.5m deep. It was filled to a large extent by slippage from the bank and no organic remains were recovered. A sherd of medieval pottery was recovered from the fill.
The bank was composed of redeposited subsoil, almost certainly upcast from the ditch construction. Within the bank, two whetstones and part of a rotary quern were recovered. Internal features consisted of a scatter of post-holes, which indicated no apparent structure. She suggests the site may be a ringwork rather than a ringfort and therefore date to the 12th century. (http://www.excavations.ie/Pages/Details.php?Year=&County=Limerick&id=1304)

Compiled by: Denis Power

Date of upload: 24 April 2013

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Sites and Monuments Record data: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Record text is reproduced unchanged. National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland · CC BY 4.0
All Castle - ringwork in Limerick All County Limerick records All Ireland Heritage registers Historical markers (US)National Register of Historic Places (US)
See your own family's places on a living map