Ringfort, Ballynaclogh, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
In the grassland of Ballynaclogh, on a gentle east-facing slope, sits a subcircular earthwork that has been quietly losing ground to the surrounding landscape for centuries.
The rath, measuring roughly 34.8 metres east to west and 32.7 metres north to south, is defined by an earthen bank and an external fosse, which is the term for the ditch dug outside a ringfort's enclosing bank. That fosse still traces a clear arc from the south-southwest around through north to east-northeast, though the bank itself has been breached in several places and quarrying has eaten into the monument at its southern edges.
Ringforts of this type were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, built roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries and used primarily as enclosed farmsteads. Most held a family's house, outbuildings, and livestock within the protected circuit of bank and ditch. What makes this particular example quietly interesting is a rectangular hollow tucked just inside the bank in the southwest quadrant of the interior, measuring 7.8 metres long and 5.5 metres wide, and sinking to around 1.2 metres in depth. It is choked with nettles now, but its shape and position suggest it may be the collapsed entrance to a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that served early medieval settlements as a place of cold storage, refuge, or both. Souterrains are found in ringforts across Ireland, but they are not universal, and their presence tends to indicate a site of some domestic complexity.
The site is in fair overall condition, though the encroachment of past quarrying at the south and southwest has left its mark. The surviving fosse remains the clearest feature on the ground, and the nettle-filled depression in the interior is the detail most likely to catch a careful eye.