Ringfort (Rath), Bohola, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Bohola, Co. Mayo

In the damp pastureland outside Bohola, a blackthorn thicket has been quietly swallowing an early medieval ringfort for long enough that the thorns now impede any serious examination of what lies beneath them.

That detail alone says something about the condition of this particular rath, one of tens of thousands of such enclosures scattered across Ireland, most of them built between roughly 500 and 1000 AD as the fortified farmsteads of local farming families and minor lords.

The site occupies a rush-grown terrace on a south-east-facing slope, overlooking a valley of wet marsh ground, with a stream running about 100 metres to the east. Its circular platform measures an estimated 35 metres east to west, defined by an earthen scarp, the raised internal edge of the enclosure, which still stands 1.3 metres high at the south-east but drops to 0.9 metres at the west. Around the platform runs a fosse, the external ditch that would originally have reinforced the enclosure's defensive profile. At the west and north-west the fosse remains reasonably clear, though its base is waterlogged and soft; elsewhere it survives only as a faint wet depression in the ground. A modern field drain, running roughly north-west to south-east, has cut across the fosse at the south-west, further fragmenting an already degraded monument. The scarp itself thins and flattens progressively from north-east to east, and at the east-south-east it disappears almost entirely, a gap that may preserve the location of the original entrance to the enclosure.

The blackthorn that now engulfs the rath, while frustrating for anyone hoping to read the earthworks clearly, does at least offer the monument a kind of accidental protection from agricultural disturbance. The waterlogged character of the surrounding ground, the wet fosse base, and the rush-covered pasture all suggest that this is a site best approached in dry summer conditions, though the thorns will remain a physical obstacle regardless of season.

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Pete F
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