Lisnaheemoyle, Shanaghmoyle, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
Beneath a tangle of blackthorn and brambles in County Mayo, low moss-covered stones stand upright in the dark, largely unseen.
This is a rath, a type of ringfort common across early medieval Ireland, typically a circular or oval enclosure defined by an earthen bank and used as a farmstead or place of habitation. What sets this particular example apart is not just the density of vegetation that now swallows it, but a thread of local tradition: according to those who know the land, it once served as a burial ground for children, a use that places it in a category of sites known across Ireland as cillíní, unofficial graves for unbaptised infants and others who could not be interred in consecrated ground.
The rath sits on a natural rise, giving it good views across the surrounding landscape, and the earthen bank, roughly 3.9 metres wide, rises nearly two metres above the exterior ground level at its highest point to the north-east. The interior, an oval of roughly 22 by 30 metres, is now all but impenetrable. Those stones glimpsed beneath the overgrowth, some apparently set upright, remain unexamined. The site appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1838 and 1919 under the name Lisnaheemoy, a slight variation on the current townland spelling. What is especially striking is the probable entrance at the south-east, a gap of one and a half to two metres that opens onto a natural spine of raised ground extending some 40 metres outward, with a drop of one and a half to two metres on either side. This ridge appears to have been deliberately used as a causeway or approach route, drawing on the existing topography rather than engineering something from scratch. It is now largely buried under blackthorn, gorse, and heaps of field clearance debris, with some disturbance from quarrying. A second rath lies approximately 225 metres to the south-south-west, suggesting this was once a more densely occupied or at least deliberately arranged part of the landscape.