Ringfort (Rath), Corry, Co. Roscommon
Co. Roscommon |
Ringforts
On the south-facing slope of a small drumlin in County Roscommon, a roughly circular patch of overgrown ground preserves the outline of a settlement that has had no visible entrance for well over a thousand years.
The rath at Corry sits near the crest of a low ridge, its perimeter still legible as an earthen bank and outer ditch, yet there is no gap, no causeway, no obvious point of crossing that would indicate how people once moved in or out.
A rath is an earthen ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its outbuildings within a raised bank and external fosse. This example is modest in scale, around twenty-two metres in diameter, with a bank roughly four metres wide and an outer ditch still measurable at three and a half metres across the top. The bank survives to between half a metre and a metre in external height, which, while reduced from its original profile, is enough to read the enclosure clearly on the ground. The north-eastern arc is the best-preserved section, retaining both the bank and fosse, while to the east and south-west a scarp takes over where the fosse has silted or eroded. The western edge has been cut by a later north-south field boundary, which truncates the circuit and probably accounts for some of the ambiguity around the entrance, if one ever existed on that side. The drumlin itself, a smooth glacially deposited ridge oriented north-west to south-east, would have given the original occupants a clear view southward and a degree of natural elevation without requiring a hilltop position.