Ringfort (Rath), Corrspark, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Corrspark, Co. Galway

On an east-facing hillside in Corrspark, County Galway, the grass grows over what was once a settled, enclosed world.

The outline of a rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular earthen ringfort typically used as a farmstead enclosure during the early medieval period, is still just about readable in the landscape, though time and the elements have done considerable work against it. Measuring approximately 46 metres north to south and 45 metres east to west, it is almost perfectly circular, which in itself hints at careful, deliberate construction by whoever raised it.

What survives today is a degraded scarp, the eroded remnant of what would originally have been a more pronounced earthen bank, along with a fosse, a defensive ditch cut around the exterior. The fosse has not survived uniformly; it remains traceable only along the southern, western, and northern arcs of the monument, having been lost or obscured along the eastern side. Ringforts are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country, yet each one represents a specific household or small farming community, most likely of early medieval date, perhaps somewhere between the fifth and twelfth centuries. The Corrspark example is not alone in its area either. Another ringfort sits roughly 200 metres to the east, raising the quiet question of whether these two enclosures were contemporary, occupied by neighbouring families working the same upland ground, or separated by generations.

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