Ringfort (Rath), Townplots, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
On a gentle rise in the undulating pastureland of Townplots in County Mayo, a roughly oval earthwork sits mostly unremarked, its banks slowly dissolving back into the ground that produced them.
This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was the basic unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries. Thousands once dotted the Irish landscape; many have been ploughed flat or built over, and those that survive often do so only in degraded form, which is precisely what makes even a modest example worth attention.
The enclosure measures approximately 22 metres east to west and 21 metres north to south, defined by the remnants of an earthen bank that has fared differently on different sides. The south-western arc preserves the bank most clearly, with an internal height of around 0.8 metres and an external height of 1.3 metres, and a broad slump of material spreading nearly five metres outward at the south-south-west. Elsewhere the bank has been reduced to a scarp, a simple change in ground level rather than a readable wall of earth. Four metres outside the bank on the south-west side, a low stony rise traces a shallow arc; it may be the remnant of an outer bank, which would suggest the site once had a more elaborate defensive or enclosing arrangement, though it could equally be a later accumulation of cleared stones. A sloping gap of about 3.6 metres in the scarp at the east-north-east is the most likely location of the original entrance, oriented, as many ringfort entrances are, roughly towards the rising sun. A second break at the north-west may be a later breach rather than a formal opening.
The interior offers its own puzzles. A slight change in level in the south-eastern quadrant hints at some internal feature, perhaps a collapsed structure or a subdivision of the space, but dense brambles have colonised both the perimeter and much of the enclosed area, making close inspection impossible. The overgrowth is in one sense frustrating and in another almost appropriate: it is the brambles, as much as anything else, that have kept the site from being smoothed out entirely by agricultural machinery or grazing pressure, holding the earthworks in an uncomfortable but effective embrace.
