Ringfort (Rath), Lecarrow, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lecarrow, Co. Galway

On the east-facing slope of a ridge near Lecarrow in County Galway, there is a ringfort that has almost completely disappeared back into the land.

A ringfort, or rath, is a type of enclosed farmstead built during the early medieval period, typically surrounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches. This one was once a roughly oval enclosure, measuring approximately 40 metres east to west and 30 metres north to south, a modest but perfectly typical example of the thousands of such sites that once patterned the Irish countryside.

The 1920 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map still shows it clearly enough, a small oval drawn onto the slope as though it might last forever. It has not. Today, all that remains visible is a short, partially overgrown arc of the original bank on the western side, standing to an external height of about 1.4 metres and an internal height of 1.5 metres, with a width of 2.8 metres. The rest of the enclosure has left no surface trace. What was once a defined domestic boundary, the outer edge of someone's world in early medieval Ireland, has been reduced to a single weathered curve in the grass, legible only if you already know what you are looking for.

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Pete F
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