Ringfort (Rath), Donaghintraine, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ringforts
On a ridge in the townland of Donaghintraine, in County Sligo, a subtly deformed earthwork sits in rough pasture, overlooking a stream some 150 metres to the west.
What makes it quietly odd is its shape: where most raths, the earthen-banked ringforts built across Ireland roughly between the early Christian period and the early medieval, present a neat circular form, this one is D-shaped. One curved side is defined by an earthen bank; the other, straight side has been replaced, at some point, by an ordinary field fence. Beyond that fence, the enclosure has been levelled entirely, so that only half of the original structure survives in anything like readable form.
The 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, one of the earliest systematic cartographic surveys of the Irish countryside, still depicts the site as a circular enclosure, which means the damage to the northeastern portion happened sometime after that. The surviving bank curves from the southeast around to the north-northwest, running to roughly three metres wide and standing to about 0.9 metres on the exterior at its southern point. Inside the bank, the ground does not simply flatten out. There is a level annular zone, between five and a half and nine metres wide, between the bank's inner foot and a central raised area. That central feature is itself gently domed, measuring around eighteen metres across and rising to just over a metre at its highest point. Whether this interior mound is original construction or the accumulated result of centuries of settlement activity is not recorded, but its presence gives the interior a distinctly layered quality. No original entrance is now recognisable.