Ringfort (Rath), Ballinlass, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballinlass, Co. Galway

A slight rise in low-lying grassland can be easy to walk past, but at Ballinlass in County Galway this modest elevation marks the remains of a circular rath, measuring roughly 32.5 metres in diameter.

A rath is an early medieval enclosed settlement, typically of the first millennium AD, formed by one or more earthen banks thrown up around a farmstead or small family compound. Here the enclosure is still legible, defined by a scarp, an intervening fosse (a cut or dug ditch), and an outer bank, though vegetation has long since taken hold and the whole is noticeably overgrown. What complicates the picture is that quarrying has bitten into the enclosing earthworks on the north-northwest to north-northeast arc, removing or disturbing what would originally have been a continuous boundary.

The site is noted in Neary's 1914 survey, which catalogued it among the antiquities of the region, and it appears in the Archaeological Inventory of County Galway Vol. II, compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra, and Paul Gosling. Associated with the rath is a probable souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that was often used in early medieval Ireland for storage or as a place of refuge. Its presence suggests this was once a functioning enclosed settlement rather than a purely ceremonial or defensive site. Two further earthwork features lie within a few hundred metres, one roughly 220 metres to the west-northwest, another about 250 metres to the south, hinting that this corner of north Galway held a cluster of early activity that has largely been absorbed into the present landscape.

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