Ringfort (Rath), Ballyroe, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
What is quietly remarkable about this particular earthwork in Ballyroe is not the rath itself, though it is a substantial one, but the company it keeps.
From its raised interior, four other ringforts are visible within roughly half a kilometre in every direction to the south and south-east. Ringforts, or raths, are the enclosed circular farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and thousands survive across the country. But finding five of them clustered within such a short radius, all intervisible, suggests this was once a fairly densely settled agricultural landscape, each enclosure probably the homestead of a single family or farming household.
The rath itself is a raised circular area, roughly 38 metres across, defined by an earthen bank that survives to an external height of about 1.5 metres on the north side. On the southern half, the bank is complemented by a fosse, a defensive ditch about 3.9 metres wide, with its own outer bank beyond. Where the ground falls away naturally to the south-west, the fosse has been adapted into a terrace rather than a cut ditch, a practical accommodation to the local topography. The likeliest entrance was to the east, where the enclosing scarp is at its lowest. Later agricultural activity has left its marks: a field fence was at some point built onto the inner bank along the eastern side, a portion of the south-west quadrant has been quarried away, and remnants of stone facing on the outer bank suggest at least one phase of modification after the original construction. The site sits in improved pasture on gently undulating ground, with Cloonturnaun Lough lying about 350 metres to the west-north-west and a small stream valley falling away to the south-west.
The southern and eastern sectors of the rath are now heavily obscured by a dense growth of blackthorn and gorse, and field clearance boulders have been dumped around the southern perimeter. The vegetation makes close inspection of those quadrants difficult, but the northern and western portions of the bank and the outer earthworks remain reasonably legible at ground level.