Ringfort (Rath), Ballyconnell, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballyconnell, Co. Galway

Beneath the surface of this Galway ringfort, a passage may have been quietly sealed off, its entrance filled in and forgotten within living memory.

That small fact lends the site an odd, layered quality: an earthwork already well over a thousand years old, carrying within it a more recent act of concealment.

The rath sits on the summit of a ridge at Ballyconnell, and its dimensions have been recorded at roughly 35 metres east to west and 34 metres north to south, making it nearly circular, the typical form for this class of monument. A rath is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, generally dating from somewhere between the fifth and twelfth centuries, defined by one or more earthen banks and a surrounding ditch, known as a fosse. This example retains both its bank and its external fosse in fair condition. The original entrance is still legible on the north-eastern side, a causewayed gap of about 2.4 metres across, where the fosse was left uncut to allow passage through. A souterrain, the term for a man-made underground passage or chamber typically used for storage or refuge, is said to have existed within the interior. According to local information, it was blocked up approximately twenty years before the site was surveyed, which places that event somewhere in the 1990s. Whether it was filled deliberately for safety, or simply collapsed and was packed over, is not recorded.

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Pete F
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