Ringfort (Rath), Cloonacalleen, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Cloonacalleen, Co. Galway

On a slight rise above the marshy grassland of Cloonacalleen in north County Galway, the faint outlines of an ancient enclosure are just about readable in the landscape.

Two low, degraded earthen banks with a fosse between them, a fosse being the defensive ditch that accompanied such earthworks, trace an oval shape roughly 70 metres from north to south and 60 metres from east to west. A later field wall cuts across the eastern side, evidence of the slow, practical way that working farmland tends to absorb and overwrite older features over the centuries.

The site is a rath, the most common type of ringfort in Ireland, built and occupied predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Raths were typically enclosed farmsteads, the home of a single family or household, defended by one or more earthen banks rather than stone walls. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, though many, like this one, have been reduced to gentle humps and hollows by centuries of agricultural activity. The oval form here, measuring close to the scale of a moderately large example, suggests it was once a reasonably substantial enclosure, though what stood within it, whether house sites, outbuildings, or animal pens, has left no trace in the available record.

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Pete F
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