Ringfort (Rath), Ardagh, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
On a south-facing slope in County Galway, a subcircular earthwork sits quietly in grassland, measuring roughly 34 metres north to south and 30.5 metres east to west.
What makes it worth pausing over is not its size but its condition and its company: the rath is well-preserved, its bank and external fosse largely intact, and a second ringfort of the same type lies only about 350 metres to the north, suggesting this particular stretch of ground was considered worth enclosing more than once.
A rath is an early medieval enclosure, typically built between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, formed by throwing up a circular or subcircular earthen bank from a surrounding ditch, known as a fosse. They functioned primarily as farmsteads, the bank and ditch marking out a family's living space and offering a degree of protection for people and livestock. This example retains its defining bank, though the numerous gaps visible in it today appear to be the result of modern interference rather than any ancient feature. The fosse that would originally have run around the outside has largely disappeared along the eastern, southern, and south-western arc, leaving only the northern stretch still legible in the landscape.