Ringfort (Rath), Shanvaghera, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Shanvaghera, Co. Mayo

In the pastureland of Shanvaghera, a dense tangle of hazel and hawthorn has swallowed what was once a carefully engineered Early Medieval enclosure.

The trees have done their work so thoroughly that the ringfort beneath them is almost entirely consumed, yet the earthworks endure in their rough outlines, readable to anyone willing to look closely at the ground.

A rath, the Irish term for this type of earthen ringfort, typically dates from the Early Medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD, and was built as a defended farmstead for a single family or small household. This one sits on a rise in the landscape, with the ground falling away markedly to the south-west and north, a position that would have given its original occupants commanding views in most directions. The enclosure itself is roughly circular, measuring about 29 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west. Where it is best preserved, along the north-north-east to east arc, a bank of earth and stone still stands clearly; elsewhere it has been worn down to little more than a scarp with a slightly raised stony rim along its top. Outside the bank runs a fosse, the defensive ditch that would once have reinforced the enclosure, now largely silted up and in places filled with the rubble of centuries of field clearance. A low outer bank beyond the fosse survives in places, most legibly to the north where it merges with the natural hill slope and presents as a stony scarp about 0.7 metres high. Inside the enclosure, stones are scattered across the surface and protrude from the ground in the northern and north-eastern sections, while the western and south-western sectors sit at a slightly higher level than the rest of the interior. In the south-west quadrant there is a shallow oval depression, roughly half a metre deep, with stones jutting from its sides at irregular angles; this may be a collapsed souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber often associated with ringforts and used for storage or concealment. A gap of about 1.6 metres in the bank to the east-south-east is a likely candidate for the original entrance, and a corresponding break in the outer bank, now blocked with field debris, appears to align with it.

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