Ringfort (Rath), Crossconnell Beg, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
A low rise in the grassland of Crossconnell Beg, in north County Galway, turns out to conceal something quietly remarkable: a circular earthwork that has held its shape for well over a thousand years.
The site is a rath, the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland, essentially a defended farmstead of the early medieval period enclosed by one or more earthen banks with a ditch, known as a fosse, dug between them. What distinguishes this example is how well it has survived in a landscape where so many comparable monuments have been levelled by centuries of agriculture.
The rath measures 25.8 metres in diameter and is defined by two concentric earthen banks with a fosse running between them. Having two banks rather than one places it in a category sometimes described as a bivallate ringfort, a form generally associated with higher-status occupants in early medieval Ireland, though the connection is not absolute. The fosse and outer bank are no longer complete around the full circuit; they survive only from the south around to the west-southwest, suggesting that erosion or disturbance has taken a partial toll on the outer defences while leaving the inner enclosure largely intact. A gap roughly two metres wide on the eastern side may represent the original entrance, the point through which people, animals, and goods once passed in and out of whatever domestic life was organised within.