Ringfort (Rath), Carrowntreila, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Carrowntreila, Co. Mayo

In the fields of Carrowntreila, Co. Mayo, the landscape has quietly absorbed an early medieval enclosure so completely that the farmers who came after simply built their field boundaries against its walls and carried on.

The rath, a type of ringfort consisting of a roughly circular earthen bank enclosing a domestic or agricultural space, sits boxed into a small square field, its ancient perimeter now serving double duty as a convenient edge for modern field fences on its northern and southern sides. That kind of accidental continuity, where prehistoric or early medieval boundaries get folded into later agricultural geometry, is not unusual in Ireland, but it is always a little arresting to see it laid out so plainly.

The enclosure itself is nearly circular, measuring thirty metres north to south and twenty-nine metres east to west, with an earthen bank that stands nearly two metres high on its external face at the west and incorporates stones, particularly visible along the inner slope at the north-east and east. The interior is largely level, with a slight dip toward the north-east quadrant, and against the inner face of the bank at the west there is a shallow, grassed-over depression about five metres across and forty centimetres deep, the purpose of which is not recorded but which may represent the remains of a structure or a storage feature of some kind. The most legible detail is at the north-east, where a low gap in the bank, partly filled with stones and splaying outward to a width of about two and a half metres, appears to be an original entrance, its edges roughly faced with stone. The site sits on a north-south ridge, with the ground falling away steeply to the east, a positioning that would have made practical sense for anyone keeping watch over the surrounding land.

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Pete F
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