Ringfort (Rath), Lurga, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lurga, Co. Mayo

A low ring of earth and stone sits on a gentle rise in pastureland at Lurga in County Mayo, easy to overlook unless you know what you are looking at.

The roughly circular enclosure, measuring about 40 metres north to south and just over 44 metres east to west, is the remains of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement in Ireland. Thousands were built across the country, typically between the sixth and tenth centuries, serving as defended farmsteads for farming families of some local standing. This one retains enough of its structure to reward a careful look.

The enclosure is defined by an inner bank of earth with stone facing on both its inner and outer sides, and a fosse, which is a defensive ditch, running around the outside. Beyond the fosse, a lower external bank, sometimes called a counterscarp, survives in places as a sod-covered stony rise, though later field walls have cut across it on the northern and eastern sides. The entrance appears to have been on the south, where a gap of about 2.2 metres breaks the inner bank and traces of a causeway cross the fosse, with a corresponding break in the outer bank. To the north, the inner bank has been absorbed into a later east-west field wall, and a trackway now runs along the line of the fosse, meaning the landscape has quietly rearranged itself around the old structure over the centuries. The bank is worn lowest on the west and north sides, partly through erosion by farm stock. A stream runs roughly 50 metres to the west, and the interior is level, grassed over, and lightly edged with hawthorn.

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Pete F
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