Ringfort (Rath), Carrownaglogh, Co. Mayo

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Ringfort (Rath), Carrownaglogh, Co. Mayo

A field wall cuts straight through the middle of this early medieval enclosure in Carrownaglogh, Co. Mayo, bisecting what was once a unified interior as though the centuries simply had no patience for archaeological niceties.

That a working farm boundary now runs through the heart of the structure is not unusual in the Irish countryside, but it does neatly illustrate how the landscape keeps being renegotiated over time, with earlier features pressed into later service.

The rath, a term for a roughly circular earthen enclosure typically associated with early medieval farmsteads in Ireland, sits on a south-facing slope of a ridge above the Glenree or Owenmore River, which runs about ninety metres to the south. The enclosure is nearly circular, measuring just over fifty metres north to south and just over fifty-four metres east to west, and its defining feature is a scarp, a steep natural or cut slope used as a boundary, portions of which have been absorbed into a field wall along the northern and south-south-western stretches. The wall behaves oddly as it rounds the site: to the north-north-east, the external face stands only about forty-five centimetres high while the internal face rises to one and a half metres, an inversion caused by the rising ground outside. At the south, where the enclosure is built onto a steep natural incline, the proportions flip entirely. Beneath the north-western quadrant, a souterrain was recorded, one of the narrow underground passages, often stone-lined, that served early Irish settlements as storage or refuge spaces, though nothing of it is visible at ground level today.

The interior is fairly level across its northern half but slopes noticeably from the centre southward, following the natural fall of the ridge. The perimeter is ringed with brambles, hazel, and thorn bushes, which is typical of these sites; the vegetation tends to colonise the disturbed ground of old earthworks and can make the full circuit of the enclosure difficult to trace on the ground.

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Pete F
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