Ringfort (Rath), Kiltycahill, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ringforts
In a field of gently rolling pasture near Kiltycahill in County Sligo, a circular earthwork sits so quietly in the landscape that a casual observer might mistake it for nothing more than a slight unevenness in the ground.
That is, in a way, precisely the point. This is a rath, a type of ringfort that once served as an enclosed farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands were built across Ireland, each defined by a raised bank enclosing a circular area of domestic life. This one has a diameter of twenty-seven metres, with an earthen bank some three and a half metres wide. Its internal height above the enclosed ground is a modest thirty centimetres, and there is no fosse, the defensive ditch that typically runs outside such banks, visible at ground level.
What makes this particular site quietly arresting is not grandeur but specificity. The bank survives best at the south-east and between west and north-west, elsewhere worn so low as to be barely legible. No original entrance can be made out any longer. Within the enclosure, the north-west quadrant is slightly elevated, separated from the rest of the interior by a faint irregular scarp just twenty centimetres high. At the southern end of this raised area, there is a possible souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, common features of early medieval ringforts that were used for storage or, in times of danger, as places of concealment. Whether this one was ever fully constructed or survives in any meaningful form beneath the surface is uncertain, but its presence as a possibility lends the already-layered site another dimension worth considering as you walk the ground.