Ringfort (Rath), Mountpleasant, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Mountpleasant, Co. Mayo

Sitting quietly in pasture on a north-west-facing slope near Mountpleasant in County Mayo, this early medieval enclosure is easy to walk past without registering quite what you are looking at.

The earthen bank still stands roughly a metre high, tracing an almost circular outline, around forty-one metres north to south and thirty-six metres east to west, with a shallow external fosse, a defensive ditch, preserved along the western and northern sides. A gap of just over two metres in the north-eastern section of the bank marks what was almost certainly the original entrance.

Raths, the earthen equivalent of the stone-built cashel, were the standard unit of settled farmstead life in early medieval Ireland, typically housing a single family and their livestock within a banked and ditched enclosure. Most date to somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries, though many remained in use considerably longer. What gives this particular example a degree of additional interest is the possible souterrain recorded in its southern portion. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, most commonly interpreted as a place of cold storage or, in times of danger, temporary refuge. They are frequently found in association with ringforts across Ireland, though whether the one here survives intact beneath the grass is not recorded.

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Pete F
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