Ringfort (Rath), Carrowreagh, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Carrowreagh, Co. Galway

On a low mound rising from the undulating grassland of Carrowreagh in County Galway, a roughly circular earthwork marks the outline of a rath, an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period.

What makes this particular example quietly arresting is not its preservation, which is poor, but its company: associated with the enclosure are both a souterrain and a children's burial ground, two features that together speak to the full texture of life and death on an ancient Irish farmstead.

The rath itself measures approximately 39 metres on its north-west to south-east axis and just over 36 metres across the other way, making it a fairly typical example of the form. A bank and a shallow external fosse, the ditch that once ran around the outside of the enclosure, define it, though the bank survives only along the southern through to the north-eastern arc. Along the rest of the circuit, a simple scarp, a natural or shaped slope in the ground, takes the place of any formal built element. Below ground, the souterrain, an artificially constructed underground passage or chamber of the kind commonly found beneath early medieval ringforts and used for storage or refuge, adds a subterranean dimension to the site. The children's burial ground, known in Irish tradition as a cillín, is a further layer of poignancy. These informal burial places, set apart from consecrated ground, were used over many centuries for unbaptised infants and others who could not be interred in a parish churchyard, and their presence beside older earthworks was not uncommon in rural Ireland.

The site sits on a hummock in open grassland, which means its low earthworks are best read from ground level by walking the circuit and noting where the ground rises and falls. The surviving bank to the south and north-east gives the clearest sense of the original enclosure, while the flatter, scarped sections to the west and south-west require more imagination to interpret.

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Pete F
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