Ringfort (Rath), Woodfield, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Woodfield, Co. Galway

Beneath a large slab of stone in this North Galway ringfort, if local knowledge is to be believed, there is a tunnel.

Nobody seems to have confirmed it formally, and the stone sits undisturbed, but the tradition of a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber typically used in early medieval Ireland for storage or refuge, persists in the area. That combination of the visible and the merely rumoured gives this site on the summit of a small hillock in undulating grassland an atmosphere slightly different from the average earthwork.

The rath itself is well-preserved and reasonably substantial, measuring roughly 41 metres east to west and 36 metres north to south, making it a mid-sized example of its type. Raths, or ringforts, were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, enclosed within earthen banks to protect livestock and signal status. This one is defined by two banks with a fosse, a defensive ditch, between them. The outer bank and fosse survive from the south-east, curving through south to west, while the rest of the circuit has been lost to time and ground disturbance. An entrance causeway on the eastern side remains detectable. The site was noted by Knight around 1975, and the possible souterrain at the northern interior, said to lie beneath a large slab with no surface trace now visible, was recorded on the basis of local information rather than excavation.

The earthworks are most readable from the surviving southern arc, where the double-bank arrangement gives a clear sense of how the original enclosure would have presented itself. The causeway entrance to the east provides a useful orientation point, and the elevated position of the hillock means the wider landscape reads clearly from within the interior, which may help explain why this particular rise was chosen in the first place.

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