Ringfort (Rath), Park, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
Just south of the N5 road in County Mayo, tucked into a stand of mixed deciduous and coniferous trees, an early medieval ringfort sits in quietly remarkable condition, its earthen bank still rising to 2.3 metres on the northern and western sides.
Most ringforts, or raths, are the remains of enclosed farmsteads built between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries; they were defined by one or more circular earthen banks, sometimes fronted in stone, and served as both home and enclosure for livestock. This one, measuring approximately 30 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west, has survived the centuries in reasonable shape, with stones still visible protruding from the inner face of the bank, likely the remnants of an original stone revetment that once reinforced the earthwork from within.
The bank is substantially intact for most of its circuit, though a section at the north-east has been partly levelled and is now abutted by a garden shed and a wall, the kind of casual accumulation that tends to happen when an ancient monument sits at the edge of a working farmstead. A gap of roughly two metres at the south-east is thought to represent the original entrance; the ground level of the rath relative to the exterior is noticeably lower here, which supports that interpretation. A faint depression on the western exterior, around three metres wide, may indicate the presence of a fosse, the ditch that would originally have run outside the bank to deepen the sense of enclosure, though it cannot be traced elsewhere around the circuit. Inside, the ground is level but thoroughly carpeted in ferns, ivy, bluebells, pine needles, and leaf mould. Beneath that surface, in the western half of the interior, lies a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber of the kind frequently found within raths, likely used for cool storage or concealment. This one sits unexcavated beneath the vegetation.
What makes the setting particularly interesting is the density of similar monuments in the immediate area. A second rath lies roughly 100 metres to the south-west, and a third approximately 200 metres to the west, suggesting that this corner of Mayo once supported a cluster of contemporaneous enclosed settlements, families or farming communities living in close enough proximity to have been neighbours, or perhaps kin.