Ringfort (Rath), Carrownacreevy, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Carrownacreevy, Co. Sligo

A road cut straight through this ancient enclosure, and what remains is a lesson in how easily the past can be erased by a single act of practical engineering.

On a low rise in the undulating pasture of Carrownacreevy in County Sligo, a portion of an early medieval ringfort, or rath, survives only as a curved arc of earthwork, the rest having been lost to a northeast-to-southwest roadway that sliced through both the perimeter and much of the interior.

Ringforts are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the island. They were typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and served as enclosed farmsteads, the surrounding bank and ditch marking out a household's territory and providing a degree of protection for people and livestock. The surviving section at Carrownacreevy consists of a raised circular area roughly twenty-five metres in diameter, defined along its northeastern to southwestern arc by a scarp, that is, a steep slope or earth face, standing about one metre high. It is a fragment of what would once have been a complete circuit, and the geometry of what remains is enough to suggest the original form, even as the road that bisects the site makes the full picture impossible to recover.

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