Rathglass, Ballycarroon, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
On a low but deliberate rise in the rolling pastureland of north Mayo, a roughly circular earthwork sits with a quiet authority that most drivers and walkers would pass without a second glance.
Known locally and on Ordnance Survey maps dating back to 1838 as Rathmore, the site belongs to a class of early medieval enclosure called a rath, essentially a ringfort, in which a family or small community would have lived within a raised bank and surrounding ditch. What makes this particular example quietly interesting is the way centuries of agricultural life have worked on it, softening its geometry while leaving the essential structure legible.
The enclosure measures roughly 24 metres across and is defined by an earthen inner bank, a fosse (the ditch running just outside the bank), and a lower external bank beyond that. The inner bank stands around 2.4 metres high on its outer face, though the interior has developed a shallow, saucer-like dip, caused by a gradual slump of material inward, particularly on the southern half. Stone detailing survives in places: a rough kerb of stones lines the internal face at the north-east, and dry stone facing is still visible on the outer face of the southern section. The fosse has flattened to a broad, shallow depression, and parts of the external bank have been absorbed entirely into a later field boundary, with generations of field clearance stone piled along it. The original entrance gap, about 2.2 metres wide, opens to the east-south-east, and a causeway once crossed the fosse at that point, though the corresponding break in the outer bank has long since disappeared into the reworked field system. Inside, moss-covered heaps of cleared stone dot the relatively level ground. A ring of hawthorn, hazel and bramble now follows the inner bank. The River Deel runs 120 metres to the south, marking the townland boundary, and a second rath sits roughly 300 metres to the west, suggesting this was once a more densely settled landscape than the empty fields now imply.
