Ringfort, Grange, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
What catches the eye here is not what survives but what does not.
In a stretch of low-lying grassland in Grange, County Galway, there is a ringfort that has been almost entirely reclaimed by the working landscape around it. A later field bank cuts straight through the monument from the east-north-east to the east-south-east, and to the east of that boundary, the enclosing elements have vanished from the surface altogether. What remains visible is roughly circular, about sixty metres across, and defined by a low, overgrown bank with a shallow external fosse, the ditch that would originally have reinforced the enclosure's boundary. A possible entrance survives at the south, though even that is tentative.
Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when defined by earthen banks rather than stone, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from around the sixth to the twelfth century. They served as enclosed farmsteads, the bank and fosse providing a degree of protection for people, livestock, and goods. This particular example adds something that not all raths possess: a souterrain in its interior. Souterrains are underground stone-lined passages or chambers, almost certainly used for cold storage and possibly for refuge, and they represent a significant investment of effort in construction. Their presence tends to confirm that a site was occupied rather than merely defensive. Here, the souterrain persists beneath the surface even as the overground features have been diminished by centuries of agricultural use, the kind of slow, incremental alteration that gradually unpicks an ancient enclosure without any single dramatic act of destruction.