Ringfort (Rath), Lissymulgee, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
Beneath the grassy floor of this low Mayo ringfort, two underground passages run in separate directions, each one effectively unaccounted for by the time the Ordnance Survey came back to map the area in 1920.
The 1838 six-inch OS map had marked them simply as 'Caves', which is how local memory seems to have carried them too, yet they are almost certainly souterrains, the kind of stone-lined or rock-cut underground passages that early medieval communities built beneath or beside their enclosures, most likely for storage or refuge. Whether these two passages were always separate, or whether they once formed a single souterrain whose connecting section has since collapsed, remains an open question.
The enclosure itself sits on a gentle rise in Lissymulgee townland, close to the western boundary, with the Roscommon border following a river course roughly 800 metres to the east. It is broadly oval in plan, measuring around 35.8 metres north to south and 31.5 metres east to west, and defined by an earthen bank of sandy, gravelly soil. The bank has slumped considerably over time, and its internal height is now quite modest, less than half a metre in places, though the external face still rises to about 1.7 metres on the south-west side. According to local tradition, the bank once had an internal stone facing, but that material was robbed out at some point to build field fences, a fate common to many such structures across Ireland. A four-metre gap on the eastern side, where the ground slopes gently down from the centre, may mark the site of the original entrance. A few hawthorn trees grow around the perimeter, and the whole interior is under grass.