Lissataggart, Drumnashinnagh, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Ringforts

Lissataggart, Drumnashinnagh, Co. Mayo

A gently sloping field in Drumnashinnagh holds something that most people passing through would read simply as uneven ground: a ringfort, one of the thousands of circular enclosures scattered across the Irish countryside, each one a remnant of early medieval rural life.

What makes this particular example quietly interesting is the way the landscape has quietly absorbed it. A modern stone field fence runs directly over the earthen bank on the southern to north-western arc, stitching centuries together in a way that is entirely ordinary to the farmer and quietly disorienting to anyone who knows what they are looking at.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or lises, were the typical homestead enclosures of early medieval Ireland, built roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries to protect a family's dwelling, livestock, and stores. This one, recorded in a 1994 archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district compiled by D. Lavelle, measures approximately 57 metres north to south and 55 metres east to west, making it a reasonably substantial example. The enclosing earthen bank survives to around 0.7 metres in height where it can still be traced, and outside it runs a fosse, a shallow external ditch, surviving to about 0.3 metres deep. On the south-eastern side there appears to be an entrance gap some 3.2 metres wide, approached by a causeway crossing the fosse, which is a typical arrangement for a site of this type. The name itself carries a clue: "lis" in Irish place names generally refers to exactly this kind of enclosed fort or court.

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Pete F
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