Ringfort (Rath), Lurgan More, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
On a west-facing slope in County Galway, where grassland gives way to bogland to the south, a roughly oval earthwork sits in quiet obscurity.
It is not marked by any dramatic ruin or visible structure above ground, yet the site has survived in remarkably good condition, its original form still legible in the landscape after more than a thousand years.
This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument found across the country. Typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth century, raths were enclosed farmsteads, the bank and surrounding ditch serving as a boundary for a household and its livestock rather than a military fortification in any serious sense. At Lurgan More, the enclosure measures approximately 54 metres north to south and 48 metres east to west, making it a reasonably substantial example. It is defined by an earthen bank and an external fosse, which is the term for a defensive or boundary ditch dug around an enclosure. The bank, now heavily overgrown with trees, survives to an internal height of around one metre and an external height of about 1.8 metres, with a width of 2.5 metres. The fosse, at 3.5 metres wide, is harder to read due to overgrowth, but becomes most visible along the south-eastern to south-western arc. At the north-east, a wide causewayed gap of 12 metres marks the original entrance, where a raised crossing would have allowed access over the ditch. A field boundary running north to south lies just to the east of the site, a reminder that the landscape has continued to be worked and divided long after whoever built this enclosure was forgotten.
The bank is best preserved along the southern to south-south-west and north-west to north-east sections, so those are the areas most worth examining closely. The tree cover, while obscuring some of the detail, also helps preserve the earthwork from erosion and grazing pressure, and gives the site a distinctly enclosed, interior quality when approached from the causewayed entrance.
