Ringfort (Rath), Rappacastle, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
There is a particular kind of disappearance that happens slowly, across centuries, until all that remains of a substantial earthwork is a slight swelling in a field and a change in the colour of the grass.
On a gentle rise in County Mayo, overlooking a broad spread of low-lying pasture, a ringfort that once measured roughly fifty metres from north to south has been reduced to almost nothing. A rath, as this type of enclosure is commonly known, was typically a circular or oval earthen bank enclosing a farmstead during the early medieval period, often accompanied by a surrounding ditch or fosse. Here, the fosse is long gone, and the bank itself has been levelled. What survives is a faint oval rise, now around twenty-four metres east to west and thirty metres north to south, tilting slightly towards the south-east, and a vegetation mark visible only from the air, tracing a roughly circular outline forty to forty-five metres across.
The Ordnance Survey maps of 1838 and 1930 both recorded the enclosure, shown at its original dimensions and covered with trees, the later edition using hachuring to indicate the enclosing fosse still present at that time. Between 1930 and the present, the earthwork was levelled entirely. The site sits within the former demesne land associated with Rappa Castle, a nearby fortified structure with its own distinct history, and around 260 metres to the south-east there is a burial ground, a proximity that is not unusual in the Irish landscape, where early ecclesiastical sites and secular enclosures were often established in close relation to one another. The truncation of the vegetation mark on the western side by a modern field fence suggests the boundary was drawn without much regard for what lay beneath it.