Ringfort (Rath), Togher, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Togher, Co. Mayo

Most ringforts announce themselves with a certain visual authority, a bold earthen ring rising from a field.

The one at Togher, in Co. Mayo, is more reticent. Its enclosing bank of earth and stone stands only about thirty centimetres high, a low oval trace in pasture on elevated ground that slopes away to the south. What makes it worth a second look is a quirk at the northern end, where the bank curves inwards towards the interior in a shape resembling the letter 'e'. This inward turn is thought to be an entrance feature, a funnelled approach that may once have controlled or announced access to whatever lay inside.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were the most common type of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. They served as farmsteads for a single family or small community, the enclosing bank and ditch providing a boundary against livestock straying and a modest degree of security. The Togher example measures roughly forty metres on its north-south axis and thirty metres east to west, placing it within the ordinary range of such enclosures. More intriguing is what lies in the western portion of the interior: a collapsed souterrain. A souterrain is an underground passage or chamber, usually constructed of stone, that was built beneath or alongside ringfort settlements. They were used variously for storage, as places of refuge, or simply as cool cellars for dairy produce. The one here has fallen in on itself, but its presence confirms that this low, unassuming oval in a Mayo pasture was once a functioning domestic site, inhabited and organised, with subterranean infrastructure carefully built beneath the surface.

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