Ringfort (Rath), Loughannacrannoge, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Loughannacrannoge, Co. Sligo

On a gently west-facing slope in County Sligo, a slightly raised oval in the pasture grass marks what was once a defended farmstead, probably occupied somewhere between the early medieval period and the end of the first millennium.

It is easy to walk past without noticing. The enclosure measures roughly 32 metres on its longest axis and just over 28 metres across, enclosed by a low bank of earth and stone that in places has been absorbed into a collapsed field wall running from the west-southwest around to the northwest. That absorption is part of what makes the site quietly telling: the older boundary simply became convenient material for later farmers, its original purpose gradually forgotten beneath the logic of working land.

A rath, the Irish term for this type of earthwork enclosure, would originally have defined the homestead of a farming family of some local standing, the bank serving as a boundary marker, a windbreak, and a modest defensive barrier. What is absent here is as informative as what remains. There is no fosse, the external ditch that typically runs around the outside of the bank on comparable sites and would have heightened the sense of enclosure and security. Whether it was never dug, has silted away entirely, or was removed by later agricultural activity is unclear. The original entrance has also been lost, leaving no obvious break in the perimeter to indicate how its inhabitants once passed in and out. The bank itself survives at a height of only about 30 centimetres, its width varying between roughly two and four metres, enough to trace the outline of the place but worn low by centuries of grazing and weather.

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Pete F
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