Ringfort (Rath), Lecarrownagappoge, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lecarrownagappoge, Co. Galway

There is a particular kind of melancholy to a ringfort that has been quarried.

Someone, at some point, decided that the ancient earthwork at Lecarrownagappoge was more useful as a source of material than as a monument, and the southern arc of this low Galway rath now bears the scars of that decision quite visibly. What survives is enough to read the shape of the original enclosure, but only just.

A rath, in the Irish archaeological sense, is a roughly circular earthen enclosure, typically dating from the early medieval period, defined by a raised bank and an outer ditch, known as a fosse. They were used as farmsteads, the bank and fosse providing a modest degree of security for people and livestock alike. The example at Lecarrownagappoge sits on a low ridge in grassland, just to the south of a stream, and measures roughly 25.5 metres east to west and 20 metres north to south, making it a fairly modest specimen. The bank is still legible across the western, northern, and north-eastern arc, though in places the enclosing element has reduced to little more than a scarp, a gentle slope in the ground rather than a defined wall of earth. The external fosse holds its shape from the south-south-west around through the north to the north-east, though the southern portion of the monument has been significantly disturbed by quarrying. Immediately to the west, cultivation ridges running north-east to south-west are still faintly visible at the surface, a reminder that this landscape was worked agricultural ground long after the rath itself had fallen out of use.

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