Ringfort, Killagh More, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort, Killagh More, Co. Galway

Beneath the undulating grassland of Killagh More, in County Galway, there is likely a passage that no one has entered for centuries.

The ringfort here is not one of those dramatic, well-preserved examples that photograph cleanly; it is partially collapsed, partially eroded, its original form readable only in fragments. Yet that partial survival is itself informative, offering a cross-section of how these enclosures were actually built and what time does to them.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or cashels depending on whether they were built primarily of earthwork or stone, were the typical farmstead enclosure of early medieval Ireland, in use roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. This example at Killagh More measures 37 metres in diameter and was constructed with two earthen banks separated by a fosse, which is the formal term for a defensive ditch dug between the banks. The inner bank was faced with stone, a construction detail that survives along the south-eastern to southern arc and at the western side; elsewhere, all that remains is a scarp, essentially the eroded slope of what was once a more defined bank. The fosse and outer bank are still traceable from the west-south-west around to the west-north-west. Inside the enclosure, there is a probable souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that typically served as a place of storage or refuge in the early medieval period. Its presence hints at a more complete and purposeful settlement than the current ragged outline suggests.

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