Ringfort (Rath), Curragh, Co. Galway

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Ringfort (Rath), Curragh, Co. Galway

What survives of this early medieval enclosure in the undulating grassland of Curragh, County Galway, is almost more absence than presence.

A rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular earthen enclosure typically used as a farmstead during the early medieval period, would once have presented a clear profile of banked earth, a fosse or ditch between the banks, and a defined entrance. Here, that profile has been worn down, cut through, and overwritten to the point where tracing the original form requires some patience and a degree of imagination.

The enclosure measures around 32 metres in diameter and was originally defined by two banks with an intervening fosse. A modern road bisects the monument at both the north-east and north-west, and to the north of that road no surface trace of the earthwork remains visible at all. A field boundary running from the south-east round to the south has been laid directly over the inner bank, further disrupting what was already a poorly preserved monument. A gap of approximately three metres at the south-east may represent the original entrance, which in raths of this type was often oriented towards the east or south-east. Inside the enclosure, a scatter of grassed-over boulders hints at some form of internal division, possibly the remnant of a structure or a partition wall, though the evidence is too fragmentary to say with certainty.

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