Promontory fort - coastal, Mullaghglass, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Forts
On a small peninsula jutting out from the jagged cliffs roughly a kilometre and a half west of Lettergesh beach, a place the locals simply call 'Lios' has quietly held its ground for centuries.
The word lios refers in Irish tradition to a ringfort or enclosed settlement, and that is essentially what this coastal outpost is, though its setting, sea on most sides, cliffs below, gives it a character quite different from the inland earthworks more commonly associated with the term.
The site sits immediately east of the stream named Oweynalissa on the old Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, and the peninsula itself measures only about twenty-six metres from north to south. What makes it archaeologically legible is the curving earthen bank that closes off the landward end, the one side where the natural cliff defence runs out. That bank stands between 0.75 and 1.5 metres high and incorporates a narrow entrance, just 0.6 metres wide, positioned roughly a third of the way along its length. A promontory fort of this kind works on a simple principle: the sea does most of the defensive work, and a modest earthwork across the neck of land completes the enclosure. The entrance width is tight enough to suggest deliberate restriction of access, though whether the fort was used for habitation, livestock, or refuge at moments of danger is something the ground has not yet been persuaded to reveal. The information on its dimensions and local name was gathered by T. Robinson and recorded in the Archaeological Inventory of County Galway, compiled by Paul Gosling and published in 1993, though the site itself was not physically visited for that survey.
The fort lies in genuinely remote terrain on the Connemara coast, and anyone approaching from the direction of Lettergesh beach should expect rough ground and cliff edges with no formal path or signage. The stream marked Oweynalissa on older maps serves as a useful landmark for locating the peninsula to its east, though conditions along the clifftop will vary considerably depending on the season and the weather coming in off the Atlantic.