Ringfort (Rath), Lecarrownagappoge, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
Most ringforts in Ireland survive as a single earthen bank and ditch, softened by centuries of ploughing or grazing into little more than a gentle rise in a field.
The rath at Lecarrownagappoge, sitting at the western end of a glacial ridge in undulating Galway grassland, is something else. Three concentric banks, three intervening fosses, or ditches, and a central scarp survive in remarkably complete condition across a subcircular enclosure measuring roughly 52.5 metres east to west and 46.5 metres north to south. Triple-banked raths are relatively rare in the Irish archaeological record and are generally associated with high-status settlement, the earthwork complexity understood as a marker of rank or defensive ambition among early medieval élites.
The entrance is well-defined, a causeway twelve metres wide cutting through the earthworks on the eastern side, which is the most common orientation for ringfort entrances in Ireland. Within the enclosure, in the western sector, lies a souterrain, an underground stone-built passage or chamber used in early medieval Ireland for storage or concealment, its presence suggesting the site was a working settlement of some consequence rather than purely a ceremonial or symbolic enclosure. A plan produced by H. Knox in 1918 recorded a possible annexe at the north-west, an additional enclosure attached to the main rath; T. J. Westropp also noted the site the following year. No surface trace of the annexe remains today, though the outermost bank's line, where it does not survive as an earthwork, is preserved in the curve of an existing field boundary, one of those quiet moments where the modern agricultural landscape has unconsciously followed a boundary laid down well over a thousand years ago.