Ringfort (Rath), Towerhill Demesne, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Towerhill Demesne, Co. Mayo

What makes this particular corner of Towerhill Demesne quietly compelling is not any single dramatic feature but rather the arithmetic of its survival.

Three ringforts sit within a few hundred metres of one another in level pasture, a clustering that speaks to a densely settled early medieval landscape now largely erased by centuries of farming. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically circular areas defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used by a family or small community for settlement and the protection of livestock.

This particular example is roughly circular, measuring thirty-one metres north to south and thirty-three metres east to west, enclosed by an earthen bank standing about 0.7 metres high. That bank has been levelled progressively from west to east, suggesting gradual agricultural attrition rather than any single act of clearance. A low, linear earthen bank runs northward off the site, running parallel to a nearby stone fence, which may indicate the survival of an older field boundary that once connected to the enclosure. The site was documented in D. Lavelle's archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district, published in 1994 by the Lough Mask and Lough Carra Tourist Development Association, which recorded the two companion ringforts lying 150 metres to the south-east and 250 metres to the south respectively. The proximity of three such sites to one another is a reminder that what looks like empty pasture today was, in early medieval Ireland, a working, populated place.

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