Ringfort (Rath), Ballynaclogh, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballynaclogh, Co. Galway

In the level grassland of Ballynaclogh, two early medieval enclosures sit pressed against one another in the ground, so overgrown and worn down that the casual observer might walk across them without registering anything unusual underfoot.

What survives here is a conjoined rath, a pairing of two ringforts that shared a boundary, a relatively uncommon arrangement that hints at something more complex than the typical single-family farmstead of early medieval Ireland.

Ringforts, known as raths when defined primarily by earthen banks and ditches, were the most common settlement form in Ireland between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. They served as enclosed farmsteads, their banks providing security for people and livestock rather than any serious military defence. At Ballynaclogh, two such enclosures survive in degraded form. The northern one is D-shaped in plan, measuring approximately thirty metres east to west and twenty metres north to south, and is defined by a scarp, a low slope in the ground where the original bank has eroded away. A later field wall has been built directly across it, running from the west around through the north to the east, which tells its own quiet story about how the land was reused over the centuries without any particular awareness, or concern, for what lay beneath. The southern enclosure is roughly circular, about thirty metres across, and retains a short stretch of bank on its western to north-western arc, with a scarp marking the rest of its circuit. The two enclosures are conjoined, sharing ground along their common edge.

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