Rathmonere, Ballynacloghy, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
In the scrubland of Ballynacloghy, a townland boundary wall crosses an ancient earthwork without any particular fuss, as though the two things simply belong together.
They do not, of course. The wall is a relatively recent division of agricultural land; the earthwork it cuts across is a rath, a type of circular enclosure built during the early medieval period, typically as a farmstead surrounded by an earthen bank and ditch. The fact that the modern boundary quietly overwrites the older one is a small, legible record of how the Irish landscape folds centuries on top of each other.
The rath at Rathmonere sits on a steep north-facing slope, roughly thirty-four metres in diameter. What survives is a bank running from the north-east, around through the south, and back up to the north-west, tracing most of the original circle. From the south-east to the north-west, however, that enclosing bank has been obscured or partly destroyed where the townland boundary wall was laid directly over it, probably with no more thought than the practical convenience of an existing rise in the ground. The site is described as poorly preserved, which is perhaps unsurprising given its position in scrubland on an awkward slope. References to it appear in Holt's 1912 survey and again in McCaffrey's 1952 catalogue, suggesting it has been known to local antiquarians for over a century without ever attracting much wider attention.