Caltragh Fort, Ballyboy, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Caltragh Fort, Ballyboy, Co. Galway

On a north-east-facing slope in County Galway, a large subcircular earthwork sits quietly between open grassland and the bogland stretching away to the south.

Measuring roughly 107.6 metres along its north-west to south-east axis, it is considerably larger than the typical ringfort, the class of enclosed settlement that dots the Irish countryside in the thousands, generally dating from the early medieval period. A ringfort of this scale would once have been a place of some consequence, defined by an earthen bank and an external fosse, that is, a ditch dug around the outside to reinforce the barrier and signal the status of whoever lived or gathered within.

The site survives in fair condition, though unevenly so. The bank and fosse are legible across much of the circuit, but from the north-north-west around through the north to the east, no visible surface trace remains. A field bank, the kind of boundary created during later agricultural reorganisation of the land, cuts across the monument at the north and north-east and then, curiously, runs parallel to the line of the enclosure between the east-north-east and west-south-west. Whether this later boundary was laid out in conscious awareness of the older earthwork beneath it is impossible to say, but the mirroring is striking. Gaps visible at the east, south-south-west, and west are considered modern intrusions rather than original entrances. Within the interior there is also a cashel-based feature recorded separately in the archaeological record, suggesting the site may have seen more than one phase or type of use over its long history.

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