Ringfort (Rath), Treankeel, Co. Mayo

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Ringfort (Rath), Treankeel, Co. Mayo

On a ridge above the River Glore in County Mayo, something ancient has been slowly disappearing into the modern landscape.

A rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a roughly circular earthen enclosure that typically served as a farmstead and defended settlement during the early medieval period, once sat as a complete circle on this northwest to southeast ridge. Today, only its southern two-thirds remain, the northern arc having been levelled so thoroughly that there is no trace of it at ground level. In its place runs a field boundary on a roughly east to west axis, clipping what remains of the bank as though the old enclosure had simply been incorporated, without ceremony, into the ordinary business of farming.

The rath appears clearly on the 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, drawn as a circular enclosure. By the 1919 edition, the damage was already recorded: the northern arc had been cut through by a field boundary, and the cartographers depicted it as a penannular shape, open to the north. What survives today is a very slightly raised semicircular area measuring roughly 27 metres east to west and 21 metres north to south, defined by an earthen bank around 2.6 metres wide. The bank stands a little under a metre high on the exterior at its south-eastern end, tapering off toward the south-west. There is a gap of about 2.5 metres at the south-south-west, which may represent an original entrance. Parts of the bank's external face show traces of stone, though this may reflect modification in more recent centuries rather than original construction. The ground drops steeply some 30 metres to the north-east toward the river, 245 metres to the east, giving the site a naturally defensive position that would have made practical sense to whoever enclosed it.

A grass-covered mound sits a few metres to the south-east of the surviving bank, measuring roughly 6.5 metres by 5 metres and standing about 0.8 metres high. It is probably a field clearance heap, the accumulated debris of generations of farmers pulling stone from the surrounding pasture, a quiet footnote beside the older earthwork.

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