Ringfort (Rath), Eskerboy, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Eskerboy, Co. Galway

On a south-facing grassland slope in Eskerboy, Co. Galway, there is nothing to see.

That, in itself, is the point. A ringfort once occupied this ground, a circular earthwork enclosure of the kind built across Ireland from roughly the early medieval period onwards, used as a defended farmstead by a family of some local standing. It measured around 35 metres in diameter. Today, no trace of it is visible at ground level.

What we know about it comes almost entirely from a single cartographic source: the 1945 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which recorded a roughly circular enclosure on the slope. By the time anyone looked closely, a curving field boundary running from northwest to southeast had been laid directly across the site, cutting through whatever earthwork remained. The rath, a type of ringfort typically defined by a raised bank and ditch encircling a central living area, was quietly absorbed into the working agricultural landscape. The Eskerboy site does not stand alone in this. Two comparable raths survive in the immediate vicinity, one approximately 250 metres to the northwest, another around 260 metres to the east-northeast, suggesting that this part of Galway once held a loose cluster of early medieval farmsteads, each within sight or easy reach of the others.

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Pete F
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