Ringfort (Rath), Ballindoo, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballindoo, Co. Mayo

A modern road bisects this early medieval enclosure in County Mayo, cutting clean through the earthwork on a roughly east-west axis, which gives the site an oddly divided quality.

On one side of the tarmac, the interior is open and grassy; on the other, gorse, hawthorn and brambles have colonised the bank, softening it into something that could easily be mistaken for a natural feature of the field.

The rath, a type of ringfort consisting of a raised circular area defined by an earthen bank and shallow ditch, measures roughly 27 metres across. Its bank survives to an external height of 1.8 metres at the north-west, tapering to around 1.5 metres at the south, with a width of nearly four metres. Outside the bank, a very slight depression running from the west around to the north-east is thought to be the remains of a fosse, the shallow external ditch that typically accompanied such enclosures and helped define the boundary of a farmstead in early medieval Ireland. A two-metre gap in the bank on the east side may represent the original entrance, with the interior sloping gently down towards it. There is a second break at the south-west, though this appears to be the result of erosion rather than deliberate design. The site sits on a slight rise with open views to the north, though higher ground to the south limits the outlook in that direction. What makes the location particularly interesting is its density of early remains: another rath sits just 20 metres to the south, and a bowl barrow, a low, rounded Bronze Age burial mound, is visible on a hillside 400 metres further in the same direction.

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Pete F
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