Ringfort (Rath), Mullenmadoge, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
A grassed-over farm track runs straight through the middle of this ringfort in Mullenmadoge, Co. Mayo, which tells you something about how the centuries treat an earthwork that nobody is actively protecting.
The rath, as this type of monument is properly known, is a roughly circular enclosure built up from the surrounding ground by an earthen bank or scarp, a form of defended farmstead common across Ireland during the early medieval period. This one sits on a natural rise in pasture land, which would have been a deliberate choice by whoever established it, offering a modest but useful elevation over the surrounding ground.
The enclosure measures approximately 44 metres north to south and 42.5 metres east to west, making it a reasonably sized example of its type. The defining earthen scarp survives to between 0.55 metres in height at the north-east and between one and 1.4 metres along the southern arc, where it is better preserved but largely buried under overgrowth. The interior has been divided by a field fence running roughly east-north-east to west-south-west, and it is along this line that the sunken farm track, about 2.5 metres wide, cuts across the old enclosure floor. North of that fence, the scarp has been levelled almost entirely to a low rise in the ground. Additional field boundaries clip the western and south-western edges of the monument, and the fields immediately to the south have since been converted to forestry, pressing in on what remains from that direction. The cumulative effect is a site that has been steadily renegotiated by agricultural use over generations, its original circuit still traceable but interrupted at nearly every compass point by later fencing and earthmoving.