Ringfort (Rath), Bodorragha, Co. Roscommon

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Bodorragha, Co. Roscommon

At Bodorragha in County Roscommon, a low grass-covered oval sits on the crest of a gentle rise, so subtle in the landscape that it shows up more clearly from the air than from the ground.

This is the kind of early medieval enclosure that rewards patience: an oval area roughly 55 metres north to south and 45 metres east to west, its boundary marked not by a dramatic bank and ditch but by a modest scarp, nowhere more than 0.7 metres high. There is no visible fosse, the external ditch that typically rings such enclosures, and no identifiable entrance survives. What it lacks in obvious drama, it compensates for in quiet persistence.

The most intriguing detail attached to this site is a local tradition of a cave somewhere in the interior. That tradition likely preserves a memory of a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber constructed, usually in drystone or rock-cut form, during the early medieval period. Souterrains are commonly found associated with ringforts across Ireland and are thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. Whether this one survives intact beneath the turf, or has long since collapsed, is not recorded. What is recorded is that a second rath sits approximately 100 metres to the west, a reminder that these enclosures frequently occur in loose clusters, their inhabitants presumably connected by kinship or local obligation. Together the two sites suggest a settled early medieval presence on this low ridge in Roscommon, the kind of ordinary, unremarkable occupation that shaped the Irish countryside long before it became invisible to it.

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Pete F
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