Ringfort (Rath), Ballinphull, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballinphull, Co. Sligo

In a field of pasture in Ballinphull, County Sligo, the outline of an early medieval settlement has been absorbed so thoroughly into the surrounding landscape that its original purpose takes a moment to read.

What was once a rath, a type of ringfort consisting of a roughly circular raised enclosure defended by an earthen bank and, in many cases, an outer ditch known as a fosse, has been quietly colonised by later agricultural boundaries. The field walls that now run northeast to southwest simply follow the line of the old bank, making the ancient and the modern almost indistinguishable from a distance.

The enclosure measures approximately 23 metres in internal diameter from west to east, which places it within the typical range for a rath of this kind, structures that were built across Ireland from the early medieval period onward and functioned as defended farmsteads for families of some local standing. The bank itself is degraded, its original height reduced over centuries of grazing and field management, and there is some evidence of a fosse on the western side, though it is not well preserved. The interior of the enclosure slopes gently from east to west. Where the original entrance once stood is no longer discernible; the bank has been so thoroughly incorporated into the later field system that the gap has been lost entirely.

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Pete F
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