Ringfort, Ballynaclogh, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
On an east-facing grassland slope in Ballynaclogh, County Galway, a roughly circular enclosure sits in a state of gradual erasure.
What survives is enough to read the original intention: a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, typically a farmstead of the early medieval period enclosed by one or more earthen banks with an external fosse, or ditch, running around it. This one measures approximately 43 metres across, which places it in the common range for such sites, though its condition has declined considerably from whatever it once presented.
The earthwork is traceable along a arc running from the south-southwest, around the west, and up to the north-northeast, where a bank and its accompanying fosse still define the circuit. Elsewhere, the enclosure is marked only by a scarp, a natural-looking slope in the ground that in fact represents the worn remnant of the original raised bank. Quarrying has cut into the fosse on the eastern and southeastern side, removing the very evidence that once made the boundary legible on that side. Despite this damage, the interior has not been entirely smoothed over. Several internal divisions remain visible, suggesting the space was once organised into distinct areas, perhaps for livestock, storage, or separate domestic purposes. In the southern half of the enclosure there is also a cillín, or children's burial ground, a type of site, referred to in the records as a CBG, that was historically used for the interment of unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground. The presence of one within a ringfort is not unheard of; disused earthworks were sometimes repurposed in later centuries for such burials, partly because of their liminal, set-apart character in the landscape.
The site sits in ordinary farmland, and its worn condition means it reads more as a series of subtle ground changes than as an obvious monument. The internal divisions and the outline of the fosse where quarrying has not intervened are the details most worth looking for.