Ringfort, Feagh, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
A low oval enclosure sitting on a gentle rise in County Galway grassland, this ringfort is the kind of place that rewards a careful eye more than a casual glance.
What looks at first like a slight irregularity in the field, a softened ridge and a shallow depression running around it, turns out to be the surviving outline of an early medieval farmstead, probably inhabited somewhere between the fifth and twelfth centuries. These enclosures, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early Ireland, built to protect a family, their livestock, and their status within the landscape.
The rath at Feagh is oval in plan, measuring roughly 37 metres north to south and 30.5 metres east to west. It is defined by a degraded earthen bank with an external fosse, that is, a ditch dug around the outside of the bank to reinforce the enclosure. The fosse survives best along the southern, western, and northern arcs, where the ground has not been disturbed by later agricultural activity. On the eastern and southern sides, a field bank, almost certainly a much later addition to the working landscape, cuts directly across the monument, which accounts for some of the damage to those sections. The overall condition is described as fair, meaning the essential form is legible even if the original height and definition of the bank have been considerably reduced over the centuries of ploughing, grazing, and boundary-making around it.