Ringfort (Rath), Rathreedaun, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Rathreedaun, Co. Mayo

In the middle of the ringfort at Rathreedaun, Co. Mayo, someone has dug a neat circular pit and left a small metal ladder in it.

The pit measures about 1.1 metres across and drops to a depth of 1.6 metres, with vertical earthen sides and a low rim of upcast soil around its lip. Its function is unknown. It is not ancient. It simply sits, roughly central to the interior, unexplained.

The fort itself is a rath, the most common type of Early Medieval enclosure in Ireland, typically used as a farmstead and defined by an earthen bank and a surrounding ditch. This example sits on a bluff above a stream, with a steep natural slope dropping away to the north and west. The roughly circular enclosure is about 30 metres in diameter. To the south-east, an earthen scarp rises to around 2.4 metres; on the north and west sides, the natural fall of the ground does much of the same work, making a fosse, the ditch that rings the rath, unnecessary in those sections. Where the fosse does survive, to the south, it is about 4.5 metres wide. A road now cuts through the western side, truncating the fosse at that point. The most likely location for the original entrance is on the south-east, where there is a slump in the scarp, a low causeway crossing the fosse, and a corresponding gap in the outer bank, all of which together suggest a deliberate threshold.

The rath sits within a thicket of trees and scrub, which both obscures and preserves it. The interior is level, which is typical, and would once have enclosed a dwelling or small cluster of structures. What it now encloses, along with centuries of accumulated growth, is that ladder in the ground, waiting for whoever left it there to come back.

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Pete F
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