Ringfort (Rath), Knockaloura, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Knockaloura, Co. Galway

At Knockaloura in County Galway, a low and weathered earthwork sits roughly a hundred metres west of a better-known ringfort, quietly holding its shape in the landscape despite centuries of agricultural encroachment.

The two concentric banks and the ditch between them, known as a fosse, are the defining features of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was typically a circular or near-circular enclosure used as a farmstead during the early medieval period. Here, that basic structure survives only in fragments, with the inner bank legible along the southern, western, and northern arcs, though a later field wall has been laid directly over part of it from the south-east to the south-west, absorbing the older earthwork into the working infrastructure of subsequent farming.

The enclosure measures roughly 41 metres east to west and 39 metres north to south, giving it a slightly compressed, subcircular outline. Where the inner bank fades away toward the north-east and south-east, a natural or cut scarp takes over as the enclosing element, suggesting the original builders worked with the existing topography rather than against it. Traces of stone-facing survive at the southern side, hinting that the outer bank was once revetted, though much of that fabric has since been lost. The fosse and outer bank appear and disappear intermittently around the circuit. Most intriguing is what lies inside: a subrectangular mound of earth and stone, approximately seven metres long and six metres wide, with a central depression about two metres deep. That depression, sitting at the heart of the raised mound, is interpreted as the remains of a house, the kind of sunken-floored or low-walled domestic structure that would once have made this enclosure a place of daily life rather than an archaeological feature.

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