Ringfort (Rath), Rathmeel, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Rathmeel, Co. Mayo

Most ringforts in Ireland make do with a single enclosing bank and ditch.

The rath at Rathmeel in County Mayo went considerably further, surrounding its interior with three concentric earthen banks separated by flat-bottomed fosses, the ditches dug to reinforce each successive line of enclosure. That level of effort in construction marks this out as a multivallate site, a category associated in early medieval Ireland with higher-status settlements, where the multiplication of banks signalled both defensive intent and social standing.

The innermost bank still rises nearly three metres above the surrounding ground on its outer face, enclosing a roughly circular area about thirty-eight metres across. A narrow gap in the bank on the eastern side probably marks the original entrance. Beneath the level interior, the site conceals something less visible: a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber of dry-stone construction, its presence now betrayed only by two areas of surface collapse in the western half of the enclosure. Souterrains are a common feature of early medieval raths, used variously for storage, refuge, or both. The outer banks have fared less well over the centuries. To the south and west, the second bank has been absorbed into a later field boundary and partly faced with stone; to the north-west, a silage pit has cut into the outermost banks and fosse. Field clearance stones have been piled onto the innermost bank, and hawthorn and brambles now ring the whole structure. A slight stony ridge running north to south across the interior is likely the remnant of a field fence added long after the rath fell out of use.

From within the site, two other monuments are visible in the surrounding landscape: a second multivallate rath lies roughly two hundred metres to the north, and a standing stone sits approximately three hundred and fifty metres to the east-south-east. That clustering of monuments across a relatively small area of undulating Mayo pasture suggests this was a well-settled and possibly significant stretch of ground during the early medieval period, even if the land around it has long since returned to ordinary agricultural use.

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