Souterrain, Mullaghmore, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Settlement Sites

Souterrain, Mullaghmore, Co. Galway

In a level stretch of pastureland in north County Galway, a slight depression in the ground hints at something that may run beneath it.

The hollow, roughly seven and a half metres long and oriented broadly north-northwest to south-southeast, sits at the centre of an early medieval rath, and is tentatively identified as a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that would have served the enclosure's inhabitants as a place of storage, refuge, or both.

The rath itself is a subcircular enclosure measuring approximately 45 metres east to west and 40 metres north to south, defined by two earthen banks with a fosse, a ditch, running between them. Double-banked raths like this one are relatively uncommon and are sometimes interpreted as markers of higher social status among the farming communities that built them, likely during the first millennium AD. The site survives in fair condition, though the outer bank has been lost along the northeastern to southeastern arc, leaving that portion of the perimeter incomplete. The tentative identification of the central hollow as a souterrain, first noted by Claffey in 1983, remains provisional; without excavation, the full extent and character of any underground structure cannot be confirmed.

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