Lisheen, Tawin, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
On the island of Tawin, set in improved pastureland with views south across Galway Bay, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly embedded in a working agricultural landscape.
The monument is about thirty metres in diameter and defined by a bank of earth and limestone boulders, though later land use has left its mark: a drystone field wall has been built over part of its southern arc, and both a field wall and a narrow boreen clip its eastern and western edges respectively. What lifts it above the ordinary, however, is what lies inside. A subcircular cairn of stone and boulders, roughly five and a half metres by three metres and standing about a metre high, occupies the interior in a way that raises more questions than it settles.
A rath is a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was common across Ireland during the early medieval period, typically defined by earthen banks and associated with a single family or small community. Finding a cairn inside one is less usual. Writing in 1912, a researcher named Holt proposed that the interior mound might mark a rifled sepulchre, meaning a burial site that had already been opened and disturbed before he encountered it. Holt also noted a similar mound a short distance to the west, which he connected to the entrance of a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, often associated with raths and used variously for storage or refuge. The proximity of the two mounds, one inside the enclosure and one apparently linked to a subterranean feature nearby, suggests the site may have had a more layered history than a straightforward ringfort would imply.