Ringfort (Rath), Dooros, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
On a west-facing slope in Dooros, County Galway, a large circular earthwork sits quietly in the grassland, most of its original form now dissolved into the ground.
It is the kind of place that rewards careful looking rather than a glance from the road; the remains are subtle enough that without some knowledge of what you are seeking, the slight rises and dips in the turf might read as nothing more than ordinary unevenness in the field.
This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, when they served as the defended homesteads of farming families across the Irish countryside. At Dooros, the rath was once defined by two concentric earthen banks with a fosse, a defensive ditch, running between them. The enclosure measures approximately 64 metres east to west and 60 metres north to south, making it a substantial example of its type. Today, however, little of that double-bank arrangement survives intact. The inner bank can be traced only at the north-northeast; elsewhere, the enclosing element has reduced to a scarp, a gentle slope in the earth where the bank once stood. The outer bank and fosse fare somewhat better, remaining visible along the arc from the southeast, around the south, and continuing to the northwest. At the eastern side, quarrying has cut into the monument, removing material and further disrupting what the centuries had already softened.