Ringfort (Rath), Somerset, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Somerset, Co. Galway

In a field near Somerset in County Galway, there is a ringfort that has almost entirely ceased to exist above ground.

A ringfort, or rath, is a circular enclosure of earthen banks, typically dating from the early medieval period and used as a defended farmstead. This one survives as little more than a faint swelling in the grass, a low rise of no more than 0.8 metres on the western side, and even that requires a knowing eye to notice.

The Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, produced in the nineteenth century when fieldworkers traversed the country and recorded features still legible in the landscape, marked this as a roughly circular enclosure of around 35 metres in diameter. Since then, land reclamation has quietly removed almost every trace. The surrounding grassland has been improved and levelled, and the earthworks that once defined the site have been absorbed into the agricultural ground. What remains is technically a monument, but in practical terms it is closer to a memory preserved in cartographic ink than a presence in the soil.

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Pete F
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