Ringfort (Rath), Derreens, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Derreens, Co. Mayo

In the hilly pasture of Derreens, Co. Mayo, a gently domed rise in the ground is almost certainly older than it looks.

What appears to be an unremarkable hillock, roughly 40 metres from north to south and 18 metres east to west, is most likely the heavily eroded remnant of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, an enclosed circular settlement typically dating from the early medieval period. Faint undulations around its eastern and southern edges are thought to be the last traces of an enclosing scarp, the sloped earthen bank that would once have defined the boundary of the enclosure.

What makes this site quietly curious is the gap between its documentary history and its current condition. The 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, one of the most detailed and systematic surveys of the Irish landscape ever undertaken, clearly records a circular embanked enclosure here, with a diameter of between 35 and 40 metres. By the time later map editions were produced, it had vanished from the cartographic record entirely, suggesting that within a relatively short period the site had become too degraded or too obscured to register as a distinct feature. A field boundary running roughly north to south now crosses the western side of the rise, cutting across whatever remains of the original form and reflecting the gradual absorption of ancient earthworks into the working agricultural landscape, a process that happened to countless such sites across Mayo and the wider west of Ireland.

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Pete F
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