Ringfort (Rath), Moneymore, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Moneymore, Co. Galway

What makes this modest earthwork in Moneymore, Co. Galway particularly arresting is not what survives above ground but what may lie beneath the scrub within its interior.

Concealed inside a heavily overgrown circular enclosure is a possible cillín, a type of unconsecrated burial ground used historically for unbaptised infants and others excluded from formal Church burial. These sites, sometimes called children's burial grounds, were often located at the margins of settled life, and their placement within or beside older earthworks was not unusual; pre-Christian monuments carried a kind of liminal quality that made them seem appropriate for those positioned outside the sacramental community.

The enclosure itself is a rath, the most common type of early medieval farmstead found across Ireland, typically consisting of a raised circular area defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. This example, roughly 27 metres in diameter, is defined by two banks of earth and stone with an intervening fosse, the ditch between the banks, though all of these features are now heavily obscured by bushes and general overgrowth. A field wall has been built directly over the outer bank at some point, further complicating the original form. The gaps visible at the north-east and north-west are thought to be modern rather than original entrances. The site sits in grassland overlooking marshy ground to the south, a typical positioning for a rath, where the surrounding landscape would once have been managed farmland. References to the site appear in sources from 1914 and 1952, suggesting it has been known to local antiquarians for well over a century, though its condition has clearly deteriorated in the intervening period.

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