Ringfort (Rath), Clogher, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Clogher, Co. Mayo

What survives at Clogher in County Mayo is less a ruin than a slow negotiation between an early medieval enclosure and the farming landscape that has grown up around it over more than a thousand years.

The earthen bank of this rath, broadly oval and measuring roughly 38.5 metres east to west and 42 metres north to south, remains substantially intact, which is more than can be said for many examples of the type. A rath is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and probably used to protect a family's dwelling and livestock. Here, the bank reaches an external height of around 1.75 metres on the northern arc, and its top carries a random scatter of small and medium-sized stones. Where erosion has cut a section through the southern bank, the original construction method is briefly legible: a basal core of large stones buried beneath the earth, placed there by whoever built this place, probably somewhere between the fifth and twelfth centuries.

The site holds a few quietly telling details. The 1930 Ordnance Survey six-inch map shows an arc of hachuring outside the north-western bank, indicating an external fosse, and a slight depression visible on the ground today appears to confirm that a ditch once ran there. A fosse is simply a dug defensive trench, intended to make the bank appear taller and the enclosure harder to breach. Inside, running roughly east-north-east to west across the flat interior, is what remains of a wall, now reduced to a low stony rise only about 25 centimetres high. Its original function is not recorded, but internal divisions of this kind sometimes separated domestic from agricultural use within a rath's enclosed space. The likeliest original entrance is a 2.3-metre gap in the south-eastern bank, flanked by lower sections on either side, a configuration consistent with deliberate original design rather than later damage. The bank has been further worn by farm stock over the years, and hawthorn has colonised its slopes, though the top remains relatively clear.

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