Ringfort (Rath), Curragh, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
What survives at Curragh in County Galway is, in the most literal sense, a shadow.
Where two conjoined ringforts once sat on a rise above undulating grassland, only a faint oval of different vegetation now marks the ground, roughly 37 metres east to west and 33 metres north to south. No earthworks, no banks, no ditches; just a subtle change in the plant life that betrays what lies beneath, or what once did.
Ordnance Survey maps from the nineteenth century recorded the site as a pair of raths aligned east to west, a rath being a ringfort of the kind built across Ireland during the early medieval period, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and used as an enclosed farmstead. The eastern fort was roughly circular, about 40 metres in diameter, while its western neighbour was more D-shaped, oriented along a northwest to southeast axis. Paired or conjoined ringforts are relatively uncommon, which made this site of some interest to those compiling the Archaeological Inventory of County Galway. By the time that inventory was being researched, however, the physical structure had already gone. Local information at the time indicated that the area had been recently reclaimed, most likely ploughed and levelled for agricultural use, a fate that has claimed a significant proportion of Ireland's ringfort heritage over the past century.
What remains is a lesson in how landscape memory works. The vegetation band that now outlines the oval is probably responding to disturbed or differently composed soil within the old enclosure boundary, subtle chemical or moisture differences that persist long after the earthworks themselves have been erased. It is the kind of site that rewards a slow look across the field rather than a close inspection of the ground.