Ringfort (Rath), Foxhall, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Foxhall, Co. Galway

A low rise in flat Galway pastureland is not an obvious place to look for an early medieval settlement, yet that is precisely where this circular earthwork sits, lifting itself just enough above the surrounding fields to have been chosen, perhaps a thousand or more years ago, as a place worth defending.

The structure is a rath, a type of ringfort defined by one or more earthen banks and a fosse, which is a ditch, typically dug to supply the material for the bank itself. These enclosures were once extraordinarily common across Ireland, numbering in the tens of thousands, and served primarily as enclosed farmsteads for prosperous families during the early medieval period.

This particular example measures roughly fifty metres in diameter and retains two banks with an intervening fosse between them, making it a bivallate rath, a form that generally signals somewhat higher status than the more common single-banked version. The site survives in fair condition, though not uniformly. The fosse is readable from the north-east, around through the east, and as far as the south-south-west, while the outer bank has fared less well, remaining visible only along the eastern to south-south-western arc. The northern and western portions have been reduced or lost entirely, likely through centuries of agricultural activity in the surrounding lowland.

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