Ringfort (Rath), Cahernamallaght, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Cahernamallaght, Co. Mayo

Something about this particular patch of Mayo farmland refuses to be entirely absorbed into the ordinary.

Sitting in level pastureland, a low circular enclosure traces a form that is unmistakably deliberate, unmistakably old, and yet easy to overlook if you do not know what you are looking for. The bank of earth and stone, rising only about 0.6 metres at its highest, describes a near-perfect circle measuring roughly 39.5 metres north to south and 41.5 metres east to west. It is the footprint of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that served as the basic unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically housing a family of some status along with their livestock and small agricultural buildings.

A gap some 7.3 metres wide in the north-east of the bank marks what was almost certainly the original entrance, a feature common to ringforts across the country and one that tends to survive long after the structures inside have vanished. What also survives here, layered directly on top of the ancient bank on its south-south-west to north-north-west arc, is a stone field fence, the kind of boundary that later farmers built and rebuilt across generations, often finding that a ready-made earthwork made a perfectly serviceable foundation. It is a modest but telling detail: the modern agricultural landscape and the early medieval one occupying the same narrow strip of ground, neither entirely erasing the other. The site is documented in D. Lavelle's 1994 archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district, which covers the wider area around Lough Mask and Lough Carra.

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Pete F
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