Ringfort (Rath), Ballyvullaun, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballyvullaun, Co. Galway

In the farmland of Ballyvullaun, County Galway, there is a ringfort that can no longer be seen.

A rath, as this type of monument is commonly known, was a circular earthen enclosure used in early medieval Ireland, typically as a farmstead surrounded by a bank and ditch for shelter and security. This one measured roughly 35 metres in diameter, a modest but not unusual size, and at some point between its construction and the present day it was absorbed entirely into the working landscape around it.

The 1933 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded the site as a circular enclosure, which means it was at least partially legible in the early twentieth century, even if already diminished. Since then, agricultural reclamation has done what it so often does to earthworks of this kind; the banks were levelled, the ditches filled, and the ground pressed into productive use. No visible surface trace now survives. The site endures only as a cartographic record, a circle inked onto a map made nearly a century ago, marking something that was already old when the surveyors came to draw it.

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Pete F
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