Ringfort (Rath), Lissaniska, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lissaniska, Co. Galway

On a low hillock rising out of marshy pastureland near Lissaniska in County Galway, the remains of an early medieval ringfort survive in a state that requires some patience and imagination to read.

Only the southern half of the monument is still traceable on the ground, and even that is barely legible, making this one of those sites where the archaeology is more felt than seen.

A rath, to use the Irish term, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and an outer ditch, known as a fosse. Thousands of these were built across Ireland during the early medieval period, typically serving as farmsteads for a single family and their livestock. This particular example is subcircular in plan and measures approximately 35 metres east to west. The bank is most clearly visible at the eastern arc, and it is here too that the only surviving trace of the fosse can be found. The northern half of the monument has been lost entirely, whether to agriculture, erosion, or the slow encroachment of the boggy ground that surrounds the hillock. What remains is fragmentary but not entirely uninformative; the eastern section still gives a sense of the original profile, a low raise of earth with a shallow depression beyond it, which was once a meaningful boundary between the enclosed domestic world and the open farmland outside.

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Pete F
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