Ringfort (Rath), Lisgorey, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lisgorey, Co. Sligo

On a north-facing slope of a ridge in County Sligo, a ringfort sits in open pasture with a degree of structural complexity that sets it apart from the simpler earthworks more commonly encountered across the Irish countryside.

Where many raths consist of a single enclosing bank and ditch, this one at Lisgorey presents a double-bank arrangement: two broad, flat-topped banks of earth and stone separated by a ditch, with a second outer ditch beyond. The combined width of these concentric defences runs to well over fourteen metres, making the effort invested in this enclosure considerably greater than that required for a typical farmstead of its era. The original entrance is still legible, marked by a four-and-a-half-metre gap through both banks, with causeways bridging the ditches. The northern edge of the inner causeway is still revetted with two courses of limestone blocks, a small but precise piece of stonework that has outlasted whatever timber gates or structures once stood here.

Ringforts, known variously as raths or lios, were the predominant settlement type in early medieval Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and were typically the enclosed homesteads of farming families. A double-banked example like this one would generally have belonged to someone of higher social standing, the extra earthworks functioning both as a practical barrier and as a visible marker of status. The interior, roughly twenty-eight metres across, retains further detail worth noting. A kerb of limestone blocks runs inward from the northern side of the entrance break, and a large rectangular conglomerate block, measuring over a metre and a half in length, lies at a right angle to its western end. Its original function is not recorded, though threshold stones and door-related features are not unknown in such contexts. Most intriguing is the presence of a souterrain within the western section of the internal bank. Souterrains are dry-stone underground passages or chambers, typically associated with storage or refuge, and their inclusion within a ringfort's bank rather than its interior is a particular structural choice that would have required careful planning during the fort's construction or modification.

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