Ringfort (Rath), Carrowmore, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Carrowmore, Co. Mayo

The bank of this small earthwork in County Mayo has been quietly compensating for gravity for over a thousand years.

On the eastern and south-eastern side, where the ground drops away most steeply, the builders raised the outer face of the enclosing bank to 1.8 metres, noticeably higher than the 1.45 metres they needed on the gentler northern side. It is a small, practical adjustment, the kind of detail that tends to go unnoticed but speaks to a careful reading of the landscape by whoever put it here.

A rath is an earthen ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish countryside, typically dating to the early medieval period between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. They served as enclosed farmsteads, the bank and any accompanying fosse, or external ditch, providing a degree of security for livestock as much as for people. This particular example is nearly circular, measuring 28.5 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west, with an earthen bank about three metres wide. A very shallow depression running outside the bank at the north-west and north-east may be the remnant of just such a fosse, though it is faint enough to leave some uncertainty. There is a gap of 1.6 metres in the bank at the north-east, which is a plausible location for the original entrance, and a second, more eroded break at the south-west. The interior is now grass and ferns, with hawthorn trees growing along the perimeter, and a heap of field clearance stones has accumulated against the outer bank at the south. A short distance further south, two irregular stony pits, each up to three to five metres across, have been dug into the ground, their relationship to the rath unclear. The views from here open out most generously to the north and across the north-east to south-east arc, the ground falling away to wettish pasture to the east, which gives some sense of why this slight rise was chosen in the first place.

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Pete F
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