Ringfort (Rath), Carrowntanlis, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
Near the crest of a ridge in the rolling grassland of north County Galway, a circular earthwork sits in a state of quiet, partial survival.
It is a rath, which is to say a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was built across Ireland in the early medieval period, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries. This one measures 47.5 metres in diameter, large enough to have housed a reasonably prosperous household and its outbuildings. What makes it worth pausing over is precisely the combination of what remains and what has been lost, and how clearly the ground still speaks of both.
The enclosure is defined by a bank and an external fosse, which is a ditch dug around the outside of the bank to reinforce the boundary and complicate any approach. At the south and west, quarrying has eaten into those enclosing elements, cutting away portions of the bank and likely disturbing the fosse in those sectors. The fosse itself is still legible on the south-west side and around the arc running from the north-west through north to the north-east, where the land has been left largely undisturbed. Several gaps appear around the northern and eastern sides, but these are thought to be modern breaks rather than original entrances. It is a site that has been worked around rather than deliberately protected, and the evidence of that encroachment is visible in the ground itself.
