Ringfort (Rath), Liss, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
Beneath a tangle of bramble and encroaching bushes in the hilly pastureland of Liss, Co. Galway, a circular earthwork sits in a state of quiet, irregular survival.
It is a rath, a type of ringfort that would once have formed the enclosed farmstead of an early medieval family, its bank and internal space defining both a working settlement and a social boundary. This particular example stretches roughly 47 metres in diameter, though you would be forgiven for struggling to read that full circuit in the field today.
The monument is defined by a scarp rather than a well-maintained raised bank, and the northern to south-western arc is so thickly overgrown with bramble and scrub that its original profile is difficult to make out. The south-western to northern stretch fares no better; that section of the enclosing bank has been dug into at several points, leaving the outline irregular and interrupted. Field walls, built at some later period, cut across the monument at both the northern and eastern sides, absorbing parts of the old boundary into the working infrastructure of the surrounding farmland. Despite all of this, the interior retains a faint topographical memory of its original form, rising gently towards the centre in a way that suggests the deliberate shaping of the ground by whoever first raised this place.