Ringfort (Rath), Tanrego, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Tanrego, Co. Sligo

On the Ordnance Survey's six-inch maps of Sligo, this site appears not as a fort or an enclosure but as a tree-ring, the cartographers apparently reading it as a clump of plantation rather than a piece of early medieval archaeology.

That small misidentification says something about how thoroughly this ringfort had been absorbed into the later landscape of the Tanrego estate, tucked onto a low rise within the demesne of the Georgian Tanrego House and surrounded by rolling pasture.

A ringfort, or rath, is one of the most common monument types in Ireland, typically a circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks, used as a farmstead or defended homestead during the early medieval period, roughly between 500 and 1000 AD. This particular example is a modest but legible one: a raised circular platform measuring approximately 32 metres across, enclosed by a bank of earth and stone between five and five and a half metres wide, still standing between half a metre and just under a metre in height internally. There is no fosse, the external ditch that usually accompanies such a bank, which is itself a point of interest. Fragments of possible internal kerbing survive, and drystone walling is visible at ground level, most likely added at a later date, perhaps during the period of estate management when the demesne lands were being worked. The bank is broken at three points, to the south, east, and north-north-east, though whether these gaps are original entrances or later disturbances is unclear. What further complicates the picture is the suggestion that the feature may not be a straightforward ringfort at all, but rather an adaptation of a pre-existing rath, meaning the visible structure could represent centuries of overlapping use and modification rather than a single moment of construction.

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