Ringfort (Rath), Barroe, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Barroe, Co. Sligo

On a southwest-facing hillside in Barroe, County Sligo, there is a ringfort that no longer exists in any form you could point to.

The ground gives nothing away. No earthwork, no trace of a bank, no depression in the grass to suggest that anything once stood here. The site is classified, recorded, and named, yet a visitor standing on the spot would have no way of knowing they were standing on it at all.

A ringfort, or rath, is a type of enclosed farmstead typical of early medieval Ireland, usually defined by one or more circular or oval earthen banks and ditches surrounding a domestic dwelling. They number in the tens of thousands across the country, and many survive in reasonable condition. This one, however, had already begun to disappear from the historical record by the mid-twentieth century. The 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, one of the earliest and most systematic surveys of the Irish landscape, recorded it clearly as an oval-shaped enclosure on the hillside. By the time the 1940 edition was produced, it had been omitted entirely, most likely because agricultural improvement and land reclamation had by then levelled whatever earthworks remained. The pasture that now covers the slope was won back from rougher ground at some point in the intervening century, and the ringfort did not survive the process.

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Pete F
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