Ringfort (Rath), Falleighter, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
What survives at Falleighter is easy to miss, and that is partly what makes it worth understanding.
In a corner of a modern pasture field, on low-lying wet ground in County Mayo, a ringfort has been reduced by centuries of agricultural pressure to little more than a faint saucer pressed into the earth. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when they were defined by earthen banks rather than stone, were the typical enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, built roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Tens of thousands were once scattered across the country; many have been ploughed flat or swallowed by development, and the one at Falleighter belongs to that large, quietly diminished category.
The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring approximately 26 metres on its northeast to southwest axis and 24 metres northwest to southeast. Its defining bank has been levelled to a very low rise, somewhere between 7 and 8 metres wide, with an internal height of just 0.3 metres and an external height of 0.55 metres. That slight difference in height, combined with a broad external slump and a low internal lip, gives the whole thing a shallow, dish-like profile when seen from the right angle. The site sits in lowlying wet ground, with higher ground rising to the southwest and a low ridge to the northwest limiting the outlook; views to the north are relatively open. Modern field boundaries have encroached considerably. A straight fence running roughly north-northeast to south-southwest cuts across the eastern edge of the enclosure, with a field ditch on its western side and a trackway on its eastern side. A second fence, running northwest to southeast, overlies the bank at the southwestern end. The interior, what remains accessible of it, is level and grassy.