Ringfort (Rath), Ballyglass, Co. Sligo

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Ringfort (Rath), Ballyglass, Co. Sligo

From the outside, the most immediately readable feature of this earthwork in Ballyglass is the difference in scale between its two faces.

The outer bank rises a full two metres above the surrounding pasture, while the interior drops only about half a metre from the bank's crest, giving the enclosure an asymmetry that is easy to miss until you look at the numbers. That external profile was the point: a rath, the most common type of early medieval Irish farmstead enclosure, announced itself through its outward height, presenting a formidable face to the landscape while keeping the interior relatively level and usable.

The enclosure is a raised circular area roughly twenty-five metres in diameter, ringed by an earthen bank some six and a half metres wide. Beyond the bank runs a shallow fosse, a surrounding ditch cut to reinforce the barrier, about four metres across and just under half a metre deep at its outer edge. These proportions are fairly typical of a modest rural rath, the kind of enclosed farmstead that tens of thousands of farming families across early medieval Ireland would have occupied between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. What adds a small note of uncertainty to this particular example is the large break on the eastern side, six metres wide, which may represent the original entrance or may simply be a later disturbance. A possible structural feature survives along the inner face of the northern bank, though its nature is not fully resolved.

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Pete F
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