Ringfort (Rath), Lisfinny, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lisfinny, Co. Galway

Beneath the undulating pastureland of Lisfinny in County Galway, there may be a hidden underground passage that nobody has properly investigated.

A shallow hollow in the northern part of this early medieval ringfort hints at a souterrain, the term for a stone-lined underground chamber or tunnel that was typically used for storage or as a place of refuge. It is easy to walk past such a depression without a second thought, yet it points to the possibility that the people who once lived here engineered something beneath the surface as well as above it.

The rath itself is a subcircular enclosure, measuring 64 metres east to west and 60 metres north to south, which puts it at the larger end of what one might expect for a defended farmstead of early medieval Ireland. A rath is essentially a ringfort defined by an earthen bank rather than stone walling, and here the bank survives with an external height of 2.2 metres and an internal height of 0.8 metres, with a width of around 2.6 metres. Outside the bank runs a fosse, that is, a ditch, roughly 2.3 metres wide, which would have reinforced the enclosure's defensive character. The original entrance, a gap of about 4 metres, is still legible on the eastern side. A modern road running north to south clips the western edge of the fosse, a small indignity that has been quietly absorbed into the landscape without entirely obscuring what remains. The site is recorded as being in fair condition, which in archaeological terms means enough survives to read clearly, even if time and farming have taken their toll.

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Pete F
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