Ringfort (Rath), Ballinloughaun, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballinloughaun, Co. Mayo

What looks, at first glance, like an oddly shaped field boundary in the pastureland of Ballinloughaun is in fact the much-reduced remains of a rath, the early medieval earthwork enclosure that once served as a farmstead and defended settlement for an Irish farming family, most likely sometime between the fifth and twelfth centuries.

The site sits on a gentle rise in softly rolling ground, with a stream running some 250 metres to the west, a typically practical choice of location: elevated enough to survey the surrounding land, close enough to water without being vulnerable to flooding.

The rath has changed considerably over the centuries, and the historical record makes that gradual erosion legible in an interesting way. The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1838 recorded it as a complete circular enclosure, though already clipped at its southern edge by a road or laneway. By the 1922 revision it had become roughly D-shaped, with straight field boundaries cutting into its eastern and southern arcs. Today that D-shape persists, measuring approximately 22.7 metres east to west and 20 metres north to south. A low bank of earth and stone, standing just under a metre on its outer face at the north-north-east, traces the curved western and northern perimeter, while the eastern and southern sides have been absorbed entirely into modern field fences. There is a worn gap about 2.2 metres wide in the bank at the north, likely the original entrance. Inside, faint ridges running east to west hint at relict cultivation, the ghostly corrugations of old ploughing or spade tillage that managed to survive beneath the grass. A second rath lies only 100 metres to the south-east, and a cillín, a children's burial ground of the kind once used for unbaptised infants, sits 130 metres to the north-west, lending the wider landscape a quietly layered quality that goes well beyond any single monument.

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Pete F
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