Ringfort (Rath), Liskeevy, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
A low earthen bank rising from otherwise flat grassland might not announce itself as anything remarkable, but the interior of this rath at Liskeevy holds an unusual combination of features that speak to several centuries of overlapping use.
Ringforts, or raths, were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and used to protect a household and its livestock. This one is roughly subcircular in plan, measuring 32 metres east to west and 25 metres north to south, and survives in fair condition. What makes it quietly anomalous is what sits inside.
Within the enclosure there is a mass rock, a flat outdoor surface used for clandestine Catholic worship during the Penal era, when public celebration of the Mass was suppressed under law. The presence of a mass rock inside a prehistoric monument is not entirely without precedent in Ireland; remote or elevated sites already set apart from ordinary farmland were sometimes repurposed for that furtive liturgical use. Alongside it lies a rectangular recumbent slab, measuring 2.3 metres long and 1.25 metres wide, whose purpose is not specified in the earliest recorded description of the site, noted by Costello in 1903. There is also a cist burial ground within the enclosure. A field wall has been built just outside the southern bank at some point, and a second ringfort lies roughly 150 metres to the south-southwest, suggesting this was once a more densely settled patch of ground than the level grassland around it now implies.