Ringfort (Rath), Ballyderg, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
In the pastureland of Ballyderg, a circle of hazel and hawthorn marks out a space that has been deliberately enclosed for well over a thousand years, and yet nobody can see inside it.
The interior of this rath, as ringforts of earthen construction are conventionally called, is now so thoroughly occupied by blackthorn scrub and brambles that the ground within is effectively inaccessible. The enclosure keeps its own counsel.
The rath sits on a gently south-facing slope along a north-south ridge, with a wide spread of bog beginning roughly a hundred metres to the east. Its form is typical of the type: a slightly raised circular area, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty metres in diameter, defined by an earthen bank that measures three and a half to four metres wide. The bank survives to an internal height of between half a metre and just over a metre, being somewhat more substantial on the western arc than elsewhere, and its internal face has settled into a low, broadly slumped profile over the centuries. Ringforts were the commonplace farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, built roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, their earthen or stone banks enclosing a family's dwelling and providing a degree of protection for livestock. Two gaps in the bank here, each about two metres wide, one at the east-south-east and one at the south-west, likely represent original or later entrances. On the eastern arc, the bank has been pressed into more recent agricultural service, incorporated into a field fence, which speaks to the practical thriftiness of later farmers working around a feature too substantial to simply remove.