Ringfort (Rath), Killeenan More, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Killeenan More, Co. Galway

On a low rise above the bogland of east Killeenan More, there is a ringfort that has spent centuries quietly disappearing.

What survives is only a partial outline, enough to suggest what was once there but not enough to reconstruct it fully, which gives the site a quality common to the oldest layers of the Irish landscape: presence without clarity.

The monument is a rath, the most widespread type of early medieval enclosure in Ireland, typically a circular earthwork of one or more banks and ditches that enclosed a farmstead and its inhabitants. This example at Killeenan More is subcircular, measuring roughly 67 metres on its north-south axis, and was originally defined by two banks with a fosse, or ditch, between them. A fosse of this kind was not primarily a defensive feature but a boundary marker, dug to provide material for the banks on either side. Of this arrangement, only the southern and western portions survive with any legibility. The inner enclosing element from west to north-northwest has been reduced to a scarp, a low earthen slope rather than a proper bank, and from the north around through the east and south, no surface trace remains at all. The bogland visible to the east may have helped preserve what little endures on that side, but it has not been enough to hold the full circuit.

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Pete F
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