Ringfort (Rath), Doonaltan, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Doonaltan, Co. Sligo

A low ridge in pasture land near Doonaltan, County Sligo, holds a ringfort so worn down by time that its enclosing bank barely clears the ground by half a metre.

Most ringforts, the circular enclosed farmsteads that were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, are recognised by their prominent earthen banks and surrounding ditches. This one has no ditch at all, and what bank remains is modest enough that a casual walker might cross it without noticing the transition.

The fort is roughly circular, measuring twenty-one metres north to south and nineteen and a half metres east to west, enclosed by a bank of earth and stone about two and a third metres wide. Several breaks interrupt the bank, though none can be confidently identified as the original entrance. The interior is uneven underfoot, and in the south-west quadrant, close to the inner face of the bank, a rectangular depression in the ground may mark the footprint of a hut or house, the kind of domestic structure that would once have given this enclosure its purpose. A narrow gap on the southern side, just under a metre and a half wide, corresponds to the point where a later field bank has been built directly against the ringfort, suggesting that successive generations of farmers have continued to organise the land around this feature even as its original function was long forgotten.

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Pete F
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