Ringfort (Rath), Inishcoe, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Inishcoe, Co. Mayo

On a gentle rise above the north-western shore of Lough Con in County Mayo, there is a ringfort whose original defensive earthworks appear to have been quietly repurposed by an eighteenth-century landscaper.

A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and, typically, an outer ditch called a fosse, used as a farmstead and settlement during the early medieval period. What makes this particular example quietly unusual is the way its outer features seem to have been absorbed into the designed grounds of a later estate, blurring the boundary between ancient monument and garden ornament.

The rath itself is nearly perfectly circular, measuring 36 metres north to south and 36.5 metres east to west, with a bank roughly five metres wide and standing up to 1.5 metres on the external face, with traces of original stone facing still visible in places. Immediately outside the bank, running from the south-east around to the west, is a terrace-like gap followed by a low, slumped outer bank planted with beech trees. This feature does not complete the full circuit; at its western end it curves inward to join the inner bank, and at the south-east it trails away beyond the rath. The most plausible reading is that this slumped outer bank is the remnant of the original fosse and external bank, subsequently reshaped as part of the landscaping of the Enniscoe demesne, an eighteenth-century country house estate whose lands encompassed the site. Ordnance Survey maps from both 1838 and 1922 show a small tree-planted enclosure attached to the south-south-east of the rath, suggesting the modified earthworks were incorporated into a designed feature of the demesne grounds. The north-east arc of the original bank has been levelled, and the interior is now divided by a field fence and carries the faint corrugations of old cultivation ridges. A castle site lies approximately 290 metres to the south-east, a reminder that this elevated ground overlooking Lough Con has drawn human attention across many centuries.

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