Ringfort (Rath), Creggymulgreny, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
What makes the ringfort at Creggymulgreny quietly interesting is not so much what survives as what the landscape around it reveals.
Within roughly 80 metres to the south-west lies another rath, meaning that two of these enclosures once sat in close proximity on the same patch of east Galway ground, a clustering that hints at sustained settlement activity rather than an isolated farmstead.
A rath is an early medieval enclosed settlement, typically circular or oval, defined by an earthen bank and ditch, and used as a farmstead by a family of some local standing. The example at Creggymulgreny is oval in plan, measuring approximately 26.5 metres east to west and 15.8 metres north to south, and is defined by a bank of earth and stone. By 1952, when Catriona McCaffrey catalogued it in her survey work, she described it as a very ruinous earthen fort. The interior has accumulated field-clearance rubble over the years, piled into the northern sector, and the vegetation has grown in thickly around it. What was once a functioning enclosure boundary has been gradually absorbed into the agricultural routine of the surrounding land, its stones redeployed and its outline softened by neglect.