Ringfort (Rath), Lenanmarla, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lenanmarla, Co. Galway

On a west-facing ridge in County Galway, the remains of an early medieval farmstead are so faint that most walkers would pass them without a second glance.

What survives of this rath, a type of enclosed settlement typically built between roughly 500 and 1000 AD and once numbering in the tens of thousands across Ireland, amounts to little more than a partial earthen bank and a scarp at the south-west. The subcircular enclosure measures approximately 31.5 metres across its north-east to south-west axis, but no visible surface trace remains around much of its circuit. Field banks, built at some later point to divide the surrounding grassland, cut directly across the monument, which gives some sense of how thoroughly the site has been absorbed into the working landscape over the centuries.

Raths of this kind were the dominant settlement form of early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a family farmstead with one or more earthen or stone banks. The position here, on a slope overlooking Lough Ouver to the south-west, follows a pattern common to such sites, where elevated ground offered both practical drainage and a degree of visibility across the surrounding territory. At Lenanmarla, that commanding relationship with the landscape is now easier to appreciate than the monument itself, since the physical fabric of the rath has been so reduced by time and agricultural activity that the bank survives only along the north-east through to the south-west arc, and even there it is described as very poorly preserved.

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