Ringfort, Ballinastack, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ringforts

Ringfort, Ballinastack, Co. Galway

Beneath the grassland at Ballinastack, local tradition insists there is a cave.

No trace of it breaks the surface, yet the story persists, attached to a D-shaped earthwork that has quietly been losing its edges for centuries. The enclosure is roughly 52 metres east to west and 42 metres north to south, defined by an earthen bank that runs from the north-east, curves through the south, and trails off to the south-west. A road has cut through it at the north, and gaps punctuate the bank at intervals, most of them looking like relatively recent damage. What remains is fragmentary, but enough to read the bones of the original form.

Ringforts are enclosed farmsteads, built predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They range from well-preserved stone-walled examples to earthen enclosures like this one, where time, agriculture, and road-building have done their gradual work. The so-called cave mentioned in local tradition is likely a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber built of stone and covered with lintels, commonly found within ringfort interiors and used for storage or refuge. That no surface trace survives does not rule one out; souterrains can go undetected for a long time beneath undisturbed ground. The site sits in grassland overlooking bogland to the south-east, a landscape that would have made reasonable sense to an early medieval farming family, with grazing ground close by and the bog offering fuel and other resources at a remove.

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Pete F
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