Ringfort (Rath), Tawnaghmore, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Tawnaghmore, Co. Mayo

On a low east-to-west ridge in County Mayo, a faint circular swell in the pasture is almost all that remains of what was once likely a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, typically a circular enclosure of earthen banks used as a farmstead during the early medieval period.

It is the kind of site that rewards patient looking rather than immediate recognition. The bank, composed of earth and stones and now barely visible above the surrounding ground, measures roughly 24 metres north to south and 26 metres east to west. At its most pronounced, on the south-western arc, it rises only 45 centimetres above the exterior ground level. Elsewhere it is lower still, its outline distinguished mainly by a rougher cover of long grass and scrub vegetation set against the improved pasture around it.

What makes this particular site quietly puzzling is its absence from the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1838 and 1929, suggesting either that it was already too degraded to be recorded by the nineteenth century, or that it was never fully recognised as a monument by those surveyors. The structure has been partly levelled over time, and a gravelled farm track now approaches from the west, cutting into the bank on the northern side before turning south and running directly through the interior. A gap of about 3.4 metres in the south-western bank may represent an original entrance, and from its northern edge a short internal bank curves inward for 7.5 metres before ending abruptly, a feature sometimes associated with an entrance passage or screen within a rath. The site does not stand alone in the landscape: another rath lies approximately 200 metres to the east, hinting that this part of Tawnaghmore was once more densely settled than its present agricultural character suggests. The ground falls away sharply some 30 metres to the north, opening views across to Killala Bay, a position that would have made the ridge a practical and well-orientated place to settle.

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Pete F
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