Ringfort (Rath), Ardanaffrin, Co. Roscommon
Co. Roscommon |
Ringforts
One of the quietly disorienting things about this ringfort near Ardanaffrin is that it has no visible entrance.
A roughly circular platform of grass and scrub, about 27 metres across, sits towards the top of a drumlin ridge overlooking the River Shannon, and the earthen bank that defines its perimeter simply runs unbroken, offering no obvious point of access. Ringforts, also called raths, were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and most retain at least a gap or causeway where a gate once stood. Here, if one ever existed, the ground has swallowed it entirely.
The site occupies the north-western end of a north-west to south-east drumlin ridge, with the Shannon running some 150 metres to the north-west. Its enclosing bank is eroded and overgrown, standing no more than a metre above the exterior ground level, and an outer fosse, a shallow defensive ditch, traces the northern, eastern, and southern arcs of the perimeter before giving way to a band of wet ground on the south-western and north-western sides. A field drain has clipped the northern edge slightly. What makes the location more intriguing is its proximity to the Doon of Drumsna, a linear earthwork whose inner bank lies roughly 50 metres to the north-east. The Doon is a large-scale ancient boundary feature crossing this part of Roscommon, and the ringfort sits close enough to it that a connection seemed plausible. Excavations carried out in the vicinity in 1997 and 1999, reported by Timoney and Higgins respectively, found no material linking the two. A second rath lies around 200 metres to the east-south-east, suggesting this was once a reasonably settled stretch of ridge despite its now quiet appearance.