Rathbadoge, Ballynalynagh, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Rathbadoge, Ballynalynagh, Co. Mayo

Sitting on a prominent rise in the rolling terrain of north Mayo, Rathbadoge is a rath, an enclosed circular farmstead of the early medieval period, whose earthen and stone bank has survived largely intact despite one rather jarring intrusion: a concrete silage pit sunk into its northern interior, cutting through the very bank it sits within.

The coexistence of a structure likely more than a thousand years old with a modern agricultural installation is an unremarkable fact of Irish farming life, and yet it sharpens the eye to everything else around it.

The rath takes its name from the site as recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1838 and 1922, suggesting it carried the name Rathbadoge continuously across at least a century of cartographic record. The enclosure itself is roughly circular, measuring 38 metres north to south and just over 40 metres east to west, and its defining bank is substantial: nearly seven metres wide in places, with an external height of 1.6 metres on the east side and considerable stone showing through the turf. A four-metre break in the bank at the east-north-east is thought to mark the original entrance. Outside that entrance, on the south side, a low platform-like rise of approximately 17 by 12 metres may be entirely natural, or may have served as a small annexe to the enclosed space. The same earlier maps show an outer boundary following the curve of the rath at some distance, though this has since been largely removed; whether it was a primary fosse and outer bank, the kind of additional defensive or enclosing feature seen at more elaborate rath sites, or simply later field fencing, remains an open question. A short remnant at the south-west now functions as a property boundary. Inside the south-east quadrant, a small circular stony feature roughly three metres across sits beneath overgrowth, its purpose unidentified. Heaps of field clearance stones lean against the outer face of the bank, the accumulated labour of generations working the same land.

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