Ringfort, Lattoon, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort, Lattoon, Co. Galway

A low hillock in the grasslands of Lattoon, County Galway, turns out to be rather more engineered than it first appears.

Rising from the surrounding fields, it carries one of the better-preserved ringforts in the region, a circular enclosure roughly 70 metres in diameter, wrapped by three concentric banks and three corresponding ditches, known as fosses. Most ringforts, which are the remains of early medieval farmsteads typically dating from around the fifth to the twelfth centuries, make do with a single bank and fosse; three of each signals something more substantial, a settlement whose occupants either had the resources and labour to build ambitiously, or good reason to want serious protection.

The earthwork has two entrance causeways, one at the north-northeast and one to the south, and both are thought to be original features rather than later breaks in the bank. The outer bank has been lost along a significant arc from the north around through the east and down to the south-southwest, whether through agricultural erosion or deliberate clearance over the centuries is not recorded, but the inner works remain in good condition. Beneath the interior lies a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber of the kind commonly associated with early medieval Irish settlement sites, used for storage or, in times of threat, concealment. The combination of multiple enclosing banks and a souterrain together points to a site of some local importance. Adding further interest, another ringfort sits approximately 300 metres to the north, suggesting that whoever lived here was not entirely alone on the landscape, and that this part of Lattoon may have supported a cluster of early medieval activity rather than a single isolated farmstead.

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