Ringfort (Rath), Kilcreevanty, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kilcreevanty, Co. Galway

On a low rise in the undulating grassland of Kilcreevanty in County Galway, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly in a landscape that, on closer inspection, turns out to be unusually crowded with ancient remains.

Within roughly 150 metres, this rath is accompanied by at least one other ringfort to the south-south-east and a separate earthwork to the west, a concentration that hints at a once-busy pattern of early medieval settlement in this corner of north Galway.

A rath is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically comprising a raised interior platform surrounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches. This particular example is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 35 metres on its widest axis and just under 32 metres north to south. It retains two banks with an intervening fosse, the term for the ditch dug between them, which together formed the original enclosure. The inner bank survives most clearly on the northern arc, from north-west through to north-north-east, while elsewhere the boundary has softened into a scarp, a natural-looking slope that is in fact the eroded remnant of the original earthwork. The outer bank and fosse are still traceable around much of the southern and northern circuit. The monument has not escaped interference: field banks slice across it at the north-east and south-east, and quarrying has eaten into its south-western edge, leaving the surviving portions in what surveyors describe as fair condition.

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Pete F
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