Lisheeneenaun, Carrowgarriff, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ringforts

Lisheeneenaun, Carrowgarriff, Co. Galway

In the level pastureland of Carrowgarriff, a circular earthwork sits quietly in a field, its double-banked outline partly absorbed by the agricultural landscape that has grown around and over it for centuries.

This is a rath, an enclosed ringfort of the early medieval period, typically built as a farmstead and defended by earthen banks and a fosse, the ditch cut between them. What makes this one quietly arresting is not dramatic survival but the particular way it has been worn down and built over, leaving just enough to read the original intention while showing every stage of the land's later use.

The rath measures roughly 38.5 metres in diameter and is defined by two concentric banks with a fosse running between them. The inner bank is the more legible of the two, and close inspection reveals traces of internal stone-facing along its circuit, suggesting the original construction was more substantial than the present earthwork implies. The fosse survives all the way around, which is notable given how thoroughly the outer bank has been compromised. From the north around through the east to the south-east, no surface trace of that outer bank remains at all; elsewhere it has been incorporated into or buried beneath field walls. A children's burial ground, known in Irish tradition as a cillín, a place where unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground were interred, is recorded in association with the site. The combination of a prehistoric or early medieval enclosure with a later cillín is not unusual in the Irish landscape, where the sense of a place already set apart from ordinary ground made it a natural choice for burials that could not be accommodated by the Church.

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