Ringfort (Rath), Brackloon, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
On a ridge in Brackloon, County Mayo, an early medieval ringfort sits with a steep drop to the south-west and a gentler slope trailing away to the north-east.
Ringforts, or raths, were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically built between the sixth and tenth centuries as farmsteads for a single family and their livestock. This one is roughly circular, measuring about 27 metres north to south and 26 metres east to west, and is defined by an earth and stone bank that still stands up to 1.5 metres high on its outer face at the north. What makes it quietly unusual is the degree to which later generations adapted it for their own purposes, blurring the line between ancient monument and working landscape feature.
The bank shows traces of stone facing on its inner face in places, suggesting a more carefully constructed original structure than its current grassy profile implies. On the south-south-east to west arc, the outer face has been cut vertically and faced with stone, and a short flight of steps has been inserted, almost certainly when the rath was folded into a later system of field walls. Cattle have opened several narrow gaps in the bank over time, and no original entrance survives clearly. More intriguing still is a semi-circular stone-built structure, just under a metre wide and 1.2 metres high, dug into the base of the bank just outside its northern edge. It is possibly a limekiln, a small structure used to burn limestone and produce quicklime for agricultural or building use, and it sits beside a shallow linear depression that appears to be a relatively late addition rather than the original fosse, or outer ditch, one might expect around a site of this type. Below ground, the rath also contains a souterrain in its western half, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber of a kind frequently found associated with ringforts, likely used for storage or refuge.
The interior today is level and grassy, scattered with thistles and occasional blackthorn scrub, while hawthorn and blackthorn ring the perimeter, growing especially thick along the south-south-west to west. A second rath lies approximately 280 metres to the east-south-east, a reminder that these enclosures rarely existed in isolation but were part of a broader, densely settled early medieval countryside.