Ringfort (Rath), Carrownurlar, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Carrownurlar, Co. Sligo

In the townland of Carrownurlar in County Sligo, a ringfort has all but erased itself from the landscape.

A rath, to use the Irish term, is a roughly circular earthen enclosure typically dating from the early medieval period, built to enclose a farmstead and its inhabitants. This one now amounts to little more than a faint swelling in the ground, somewhere between 25 and 30 metres across, its edges so indistinct that it takes some deliberate looking to separate it from ordinary undulation.

What makes its slow disappearance traceable is the cartographic record. The Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1837 shows it clearly as a subcircular enclosure, a legible feature in the townland. By the 1913 edition, something had already changed: only a semi-circular arc, open to the north, was recorded, suggesting the northern portion had been disturbed or removed in the intervening decades. By the time anyone looked closely at the ground itself, the enclosure had been levelled entirely, leaving only that barely perceptible raised area as evidence of what had stood there.

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