Ringfort (Rath), Island, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Island, Co. Mayo

At Island in County Mayo, a ringfort sits in a state of quiet dissolution, its original form still legible to anyone who knows what to look for, though the land has been steadily reclaiming it for some time.

Ringforts, or raths, were enclosed farmsteads typically built during the early medieval period, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches that encircled a domestic settlement. This one measures roughly 33 metres north to south and just under 32 metres east to west, a modest but not insignificant enclosure. Its defining feature now is a low, slumped scarp, the collapsed remnant of what was once a more pronounced earthen bank, running around the perimeter and dropping to about 0.6 metres at its highest surviving point on the north-west side.

The details that survive tell a story of gradual erasure. At the north-north-west, a scatter of boulders has been incorporated into the scarp, though it is uncertain whether these are original structural material or simply stones cleared from nearby fields and dumped against the bank over the centuries. Just outside the scarp on the north-north-west to north-east arc, a faint depression, picked out by a denser growth of thistles, may be the last trace of a fosse, a defensive ditch that would originally have run around the outside of the bank. Thistles are a reliable indicator of disturbed or nitrogen-rich ground, and their concentration here hints at soil conditions altered by an infilled hollow. Cutting through the interior are two later field walls, one running north-east to south-west and a second extending roughly east-south-east from it, dividing the space into sections. The north-western portion of the interior remains under grass; the south-eastern side has been overtaken by brambles. A disused sand pit encroaches slightly on the eastern edge of the scarp, a reminder that the site has seen agricultural and extractive activity long after the rath itself fell out of use.

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