Ringfort (Rath), Killedan, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Killedan, Co. Mayo

A low earthen ring sits on a ridge near Killedan in County Mayo, unremarkable to the casual eye but quietly anomalous in one respect: it does not appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1838, only turning up on the 1931 edition as a roughly circular enclosure.

Whether it was simply overlooked by the original surveyors or had become sufficiently overgrown to escape their attention is unknown, but that ninety-year gap in the cartographic record gives the site an odd, elusive quality.

The rath, a type of early medieval enclosed farmstead typically defined by a raised earthen bank and interior platform, measures just under 27 metres across in both directions, making it a fairly modest example of the form. Its bank, roughly 3.3 metres wide, rises to an external height of 1.6 metres on both the north and south sides, with a low stony rim along the interior edge. No formal entrance survives; the most likely candidate is along the north-east arc, where the slope of the bank is shallowest, though today only a narrow, eroded cattle gap marks the spot. The interior is level and grassy, with a single large stone breaking the surface in the southern half. A ring of hawthorn trees follows the line of the bank, and to the west and south, several shallow depressions suggest small-scale quarrying at some point in the past. The ridge position was clearly chosen with some purpose: the ground falls away to the north-east into a low, wet valley where the Gweestion River meets its tributary, the Pollagh, around 350 metres away. Killedan Church stands approximately 400 metres to the east, on the Pollagh's bank, a reminder that this corner of Mayo was once a more populated and organised landscape than its current pastoral quiet might suggest.

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Pete F
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