Ringfort (Rath), Lurgan, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lurgan, Co. Mayo

A farm lane runs along the western edge of this Mayo ringfort, a slatted shed stands to the north-north-west, and the interior, once the enclosed yard of an early medieval farmstead, now serves as an ordinary field.

The earthwork has been folded so thoroughly into the working landscape that its true age and purpose require a moment's attention to register.

A rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, typically dating from the early medieval period and used as a defended farmstead for a family of some local standing. This one near Lurgan sits on gently elevated ground and measures approximately 46 metres across, nearly circular in plan. Its defining feature is a low scarp, less than a metre high, which once formed the inner bank of the enclosure. Outside that scarp, a fosse, or defensive ditch, survives as a shallow depression roughly three and a half metres wide, and at the north to north-east there is a possible outer bank or counterscarp, reduced now to a slight rise no more than forty centimetres above the interior ground level. A four-metre gap at the south likely marks the original entrance. The earthworks are degraded throughout: the farm lane clips the scarp at the north-west, field fences cut across the fosse and outer bank to the east and south, and a vernacular stone shed and a derelict cottage press in from the south-west. What saves the site from complete anonymity is its western arc, where hawthorn, alder and ash trees grow in a rough ring, tracing the old boundary line with a kind of accidental fidelity that bare earthworks alone could not manage.

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Pete F
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