Ringfort (Rath), Castleterra, Co. Cavan

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Castleterra, Co. Cavan

On the eastern slope of a high drumlin hill in County Cavan, the dead are buried inside what was once a fortified enclosure.

The interior of this early medieval ringfort, a rath being a roughly circular earthwork enclosure typically used as a farmstead or defended residence during the early Christian period in Ireland, has been repurposed as a graveyard, a quiet but telling shift in the life of the site across the centuries.

The enclosure takes an oval form, measuring approximately 47.3 metres north to south and 39.5 metres east to west internally. Its boundary is defined by a raised scarp, the inner face of which is lined with drystone masonry, stones laid without mortar in the manner of countless field walls across the Irish countryside. Modern trenches have been cut at the outer foot of the scarp on the north-east and south-south-west sides, disturbances that complicate any reading of the original ground surface. The entrance, positioned to the east-south-east as was common in ringfort construction, still exists in a recognisable form, now marked by a modern gate and pillars. What the surface evidence suggests is a rath that was, at some later point, given over to burial. It is a pattern seen elsewhere in Ireland, where the enclosing banks of an older structure lent a sense of boundary and perhaps sanctity to a new community use, though the precise date of that transition here is not recorded.

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Pete F
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