Ringfort (Rath), Ballygarraun, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballygarraun, Co. Galway

What makes this site quietly unusual is not what it is, but where it sits.

At Ballygarraun in County Galway, a circular earthwork roughly 37 metres in diameter occupies a stretch of ground just 50 metres from a second rath, the two lying in close proximity in a landscape that once supported a density of early medieval settlement that can be easy to underestimate today. A rath, for those unfamiliar with the term, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and used as a defended living space by a farming family of some local standing.

This particular example is described as being in fair condition, its circuit defined by an earthen bank now planted with a number of trees, whose root systems both anchor and, over time, gradually alter the original form. A gap roughly 3 metres wide on the south-eastern side may be original, possibly the location of the entrance through which people and livestock once passed. The site was noted by Knox as far back as 1918, placing it within a long tradition of antiquarian attention to the raths of Connacht, and it was revisited in later fieldwork recorded by Cody in 1989.

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