Ringfort (Rath), Carrownspurraun, Co. Sligo

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Ringfort (Rath), Carrownspurraun, Co. Sligo

In the rough pasture of Carrownspurraun, a slight curve in the ground and a low scarp are just about all that remain of what was once, most probably, a rath.

A rath is a type of ringfort, a circular earthwork enclosure used primarily as a farmstead during the early medieval period in Ireland, typically defined by a bank and ditch. Here, that circularity is now only partially legible, the original round form having been worn and cut into over the centuries until what survives is closer to a D-shape, roughly 30 metres on its longer axis and 20 metres across.

The site was recorded on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1838, which marked it as an embanked circular area of around 30 metres in diameter. That mapping gives a useful baseline: at some point between the early medieval period when such enclosures were built and the nineteenth century when surveyors noted it, the earthwork was already well enough established in the landscape to be worth recording, even if its original function had long been forgotten. Since then, the levelling has continued. A field boundary running northeast to southwest now forms the straight southeastern side of what was once a curved enclosure, and a second boundary on an east-west axis cuts directly across the northern half of the interior, meaning the monument has been divided by the practical geometry of agricultural land use rather than preserved within it.

The site sits at the intersection of two fields, with ground rising gently to the west and southwest. For anyone who knows what to look for, the curving rise to the southwest and the low scarp to the north-northeast are the clearest surviving indicators of the original earthwork. The qualifier "possible" rath reflects the degree to which the remains have been reduced; without excavation, the identification rests largely on that 1838 map evidence and the faint traces still readable in the topography.

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Pete F
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