Ringfort (Rath), Kilcloony, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
What looks from a distance like a slight unevenness in a Galway pasture turns out, on closer inspection, to be the flattened remains of an early medieval settlement enclosure, its concentric earthworks still legible beneath the grass if you know what to look for.
The site sits on a south-facing slope in Kilcloony townland, roughly 150 metres to the west-northwest of Kilcloony Castle, and despite centuries of agricultural pressure it retains enough of its original form to reward careful attention.
The earthwork is a rath, a type of circular enclosure defined by one or more banks and ditches, typically associated with the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland. This particular example measures 57 metres in diameter and was originally enclosed by two earthen banks with a fosse, or ditch, between them. The inner bank, 4.5 metres wide, survives to a modest external height of around 0.9 metres at the north and southwest, though elsewhere the enclosing element has eroded to little more than a scarp in the ground. The outer bank and fosse are better preserved in places, surviving almost continuously around the circuit except at the southeast and northwest. What makes the site more interesting than its battered condition might suggest is what LiDAR imagery revealed in a 2019 study by FitzPatrick: field boundaries appear to extend outward from the rath to the south, southwest, and northwest, and further curving banks are visible in the surrounding fields on multiple sides. These features may represent the remnants of an organised field system once attached to the rath, suggesting that what survives here is not just a homestead boundary but a fragment of an early agricultural landscape, most of it now invisible at ground level but recoverable through remote sensing technology.
