Ringfort (Rath), Gloves Middle, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
In a field of undulating pastureland in County Galway, a roughly circular earthwork sits on a south-facing slope, its bank so thoroughly colonised by thorn bushes that the structure is more felt than seen.
What makes this particular site quietly arresting is not the rath itself, worn and poorly preserved as it is, but what lies associated with it: a children's burial ground, recorded separately but bound to this spot in ways that speak to a long, layered use of the landscape.
The earthwork is a rath, the most common monument type in the Irish countryside, typically an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period defined by one or more circular banks and ditches. Here, the bank and its external fosse, a ditch dug to reinforce the enclosure, survive from the south-east around through the west to the north-west, describing a subcircular form measuring roughly fifty metres on its longer axis. The associated burial ground belongs to a tradition of cillíní, informal interment sites used for unbaptised children and others excluded from consecrated ground, which were frequently established at or near pre-existing ancient monuments. The pairing was documented by Cody in 1989, and the two features remain linked in the archaeological record as distinct but inseparable presences on the same slope.