Ringfort (Rath), Cuilmore, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
On a ridge top in Cuilmore, a roughly circular patch of raised ground sits quietly in pasture, its earthen rim still holding enough height, over a metre and a half in places, to mark it out from the surrounding field.
This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that thousands of early medieval families across Ireland built and occupied between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. Most were modest affairs, a family homestead defined by a bank and ditch, sometimes with a timber or stone structure inside. This one is relatively small, measuring about 23 metres east to west and just over 20 metres north to south, but what it lacks in scale it compensates for in situation. The ridge commands wide views southward over a flat spread of bog and pasture, the kind of vantage point that would have mattered both practically and, perhaps, socially.
The earthen scarp that defines the enclosure is what survives of what was once a proper bank, probably around three metres wide at its base. A slight internal lip survives on the eastern arc, and a crop mark visible elsewhere traces the original line of the structure. Inside, the ground slopes very gently down toward the north, and faint traces of cultivation ridges run on a north to south axis, suggesting the interior was worked as agricultural ground at some point after the ringfort fell out of use. A shallow circular depression roughly four metres across sits close to the scarp in the eastern half; its purpose is not stated, but shallow depressions of this kind in ringfort interiors are sometimes associated with collapsed souterrains, the underground stone-lined passages that early medieval occupants used for storage or refuge. A more recent intrusion is visible in the landscape record too: a field fence shown on the 1919 Ordnance Survey six-inch map once bisected the interior, cutting slightly east of centre on a roughly north to south axis. That fence has since been removed, replaced by one that curves around the eastern side of the enclosure, incorporating the scarp itself, which has been faced externally with stone.
The thorn bushes growing lightly around the perimeter are a common sight at ringfort sites, where the raised ground and old earthworks create conditions that farming tends to leave alone. Field clearance stones have been piled against the western scarp over the years. A second enclosure sits approximately 75 metres to the east along the same ridge top, raising the intriguing possibility that the two structures were related, whether as contemporary sites or as successive occupations of a particularly well-positioned piece of ground.