Ringfort (Rath), Curragh More, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Curragh More, Co. Galway

Beneath a vegetable garden in Curragh More, Co. Galway, lies the ghost of an early medieval settlement.

The site is a rath, a type of ringfort defined by one or more earthen banks enclosing a roughly circular area, typically used as a farmstead during the early medieval period in Ireland. What makes this particular example quietly strange is the fate of its interior: rather than being left as rough pasture or ploughed under, it has been pressed into service as a kitchen garden, its ancient enclosure now dividing cabbages or onions from the surrounding fields.

The monument sits on a gentle south-facing slope in pastureland, and was classified by Cody in 1989 as a subcircular rath measuring approximately 31 metres north to south and 29 metres east to west. The defining bank survives well enough to read in places, but its northern arc has been lost entirely, leaving no visible surface trace on that side. Field walls have been built directly through the monument at the north-west and north-east, cutting across the prehistoric earthwork as agricultural needs shifted over the centuries. The result is a site that has been neither preserved nor fully destroyed, but gradually absorbed into the working landscape around it.

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