Ringfort (Rath), Carrowgilpatrick, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ringforts
A low ridge in County Sligo pasture might not seem like promising ground for early medieval archaeology, yet the oval platform sitting on the land at Carrowgilpatrick marks the remains of a rath, a type of ringfort that once served as an enclosed farmstead or homestead of the kind built across Ireland between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries.
Thousands of these sites survive in varying states of preservation, but this one occupies an ambiguous middle ground: visible enough to measure, worn enough to leave almost no drama in the landscape.
The enclosure is oval in plan, measuring approximately 32 metres on its north-south axis and 27 metres east to west. What survives of the defining bank, built from earth and stone, is broad relative to its height, running to about 4.6 metres wide but only 0.3 metres tall at its maximum. Beyond it, on the south-west to north-east arc, lies a fosse, the term for the external ditch that would have reinforced the defensive or demarcating character of the enclosure, accompanied by a low outer bank. Where an original entrance once broke through this arrangement, there is no longer any trace. A modern field boundary now runs along the outer foot of that secondary bank, grafting a working agricultural line onto what is almost certainly a much older one. Much of the rest of the site is buried under heaped field clearance stones, the accumulated product of farmers moving rocks off productive ground over many generations, which has both protected and concealed whatever earthwork detail might otherwise remain.