Ringfort (Rath), Corroy, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Corroy, Co. Mayo

A rath, or ringfort, is an early medieval enclosure, typically circular, defined by one or more earthen banks and used as a farmstead or settlement, often between roughly 500 and 1000 AD.

The one at Corroy in County Mayo is modest in scale, around thirty metres across, but its situation is what makes it worth a second look. It sits at the foot of a small ridge, with a larger rath crowning the same ridge about a hundred metres to the west. The arrangement suggests that this lower enclosure was not an isolated dwelling but part of a paired or related complex, the smaller site subordinate in position, overlooked by its neighbour on the high ground.

The earthen bank that defines the enclosure is still compact and reasonably well preserved, roughly four metres wide and rising to about a metre and a half on the north-north-east side. The builders had to compensate for a natural drop in the ground on the north-east and east sides, building the bank up on that flank to maintain a level interior. A narrow gap in the bank on the north-east, faced with stones on either side, may be the original entrance, though a second break on the north-west is more likely the result of gradual erosion. Outside the bank on the south there is a faint depression that may once have been a fosse, the shallow ditch that typically ran around the outside of a rath to reinforce the bank. A jumbled mound of stones and earth occupies part of the northern interior, though whether it represents something structural or simply accumulated field clearance is impossible to say without excavation. Several large stones along the bank itself are almost certainly the result of farmers clearing the surrounding pasture over the centuries.

The perimeter is now ringed with hazel, and the interior is largely choked with hazel, blackthorn, and brambles, with moss and bluebells visible in the clearer patches. The main road runs immediately to the east, meaning the rath sits closer to modern traffic than most of its kind, an odd adjacency for something that has been quietly accumulating vegetation since the early Middle Ages.

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