Ringfort (Rath), Drumeyre, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Drumeyre, Co. Galway

On a low rise in the Galway grassland at Drumeyre, the ground betrays itself.

What looks at first like a slight unevenness in the field resolves, on closer inspection, into the eroded outline of an early medieval enclosure, a rath, its earthworks worn down by centuries of agriculture and weather but still legible to anyone who knows what to look for. Raths, sometimes called ringforts, were the most common settlement type in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead within one or more circular or oval banks of earth. This one has been poorly preserved, yet its fundamental geometry survives.

The enclosure is oval rather than perfectly circular, measuring roughly 44.8 metres on its northwest to southeast axis and 37 metres across. A bank defines the perimeter, and an external fosse, that is, a ditch dug to reinforce the bank and deter livestock or intruders, remains visible along the southern and southwestern arc. Traces of what may be a second, outer bank also survive at the south, which would suggest the site was once a more substantial enclosure than it now appears. A gap of around 2.7 metres on the northern side is thought to be the original entrance rather than a later breach, a detail that quietly anchors the site to the people who built and used it.

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