Ringfort (Rath), Clooncon, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Clooncon, Co. Galway

On an east-facing slope in the undulating grassland of Clooncon, a roughly circular earthwork sits in a state of slow erasure.

What was once a rath, an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period typically comprising a raised bank and surrounding ditch, is now only partially legible in the landscape. At its widest, the enclosure measures around 32 metres east to west, but only a section of the original bank survives intact, visible at the north-west. Elsewhere, the enclosing element has softened into a degraded scarp, a low slope in the ground that hints at where the boundary once stood rather than asserting it.

A rath of this kind would originally have consisted of a circular earthen bank thrown up from the spoil of an external fosse, the ditch dug around the perimeter. Together, bank and fosse defined a farmstead, most likely of early medieval date, sheltering a household and its animals. The Clooncon example has been further complicated by agricultural activity: a field bank cuts across the monument at both the north-north-west and south-south-west, dividing what remains and reflecting generations of land management that made no allowance for what lay beneath. The site was noted by Knight around 1975 and by Conway around 1980, and by the time those observations were recorded, the monument was already in poor condition.

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