Ringfort, Drumagh, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Ringforts

Ringfort, Drumagh, Co. Mayo

What survives of this ringfort in Drumagh, County Mayo is not immediately obvious as a monument at all.

A ringfort is a roughly circular enclosed farmstead of early medieval date, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and thousands of them survive across Ireland. This one, however, has been quietly absorbed by the working landscape around it, its banks incorporated into later field boundaries and its outline blurred enough that it reads more as a slight thickening in the hedgerow than a structure with any age behind it.

The earthwork sits at the eastern end of an east-west ridge, with the ground dropping away sharply to the south towards a flat stretch of reclaimed or wettish pasture below. The enclosure, measured at roughly 23 metres north to south and around 16 metres east to west, is sub-rectangular in form, which is itself a little irregular for a ringfort type. What was once a continuous curving scarp, the remnant of an original bank, now survives only in fragments. Along the south-west to north-north-west arc it remains as a low, broadly slumped earthen edge, standing no more than half a metre high. To the north, a straight east-west field wall appears to have cut directly across the original scarp, truncating whatever survived in that direction. Elsewhere, the remains have been built into an earth and stone field fence that reaches 1.3 metres in height at the south, with a shallow field ditch running along its inner western side. The interior is level but uneven underfoot, and the eastern and south-western perimeter has disappeared into overgrowth. A modern cottage sits adjacent to the north-west and a farmyard to the south-west, placing the old enclosure in the middle of a very ordinary agricultural setting, which is precisely why it is so easy to pass without a second thought.

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Pete F
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