Ringfort (Rath), Drumnagoal, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ringforts
What survives at Drumnagoal is a skeleton of something that was once considerably more substantial.
On the north-western end of a low ridge in rough pasture, a raised oval platform is outlined by two close-set concentric rings of large slabs and boulders, the stones reaching no more than 0.6 metres in height at their tallest. This is the bare armature of a rath, a type of enclosed farmstead common throughout early medieval Ireland, typically formed by one or more earthen banks and ditches surrounding a domestic interior. Here, the earth and rubble that once packed the space between the two kerb rings, a band somewhere between 1.2 and 2 metres wide, has long since gone, leaving the stonework exposed like the spine of a structure stripped of its flesh.
The oval enclosure measures roughly 41.8 metres on its north-west to south-east axis and 30.6 metres across the north-east to south-west, giving it a modest but legible footprint. The double kerb is broken by gaps of varying sizes, some likely the result of stone robbing or field clearance over the centuries. Along the south-south-west to west-north-west arc, the perimeter wall has been absorbed into a later field boundary running north-west to south-east, a common fate for ancient enclosures whose stonework was simply too useful to leave alone. At the northern side, beside a wide gap, a single stone has been set transversely across the line of the other kerb stones, a small but deliberate anomaly that may indicate where the original entrance once stood.