What is recorded here

Indicated is a circular earthen fortress on rising Mayo ground, overlooking a broad valley where shadow and memory still move. Its scarp, fosse and external bank remain visible through grass and hawthorn, marking a place where people may have lived, hidden or watched the land below. Two quarry pits now cut through its edges, changing the shape but not the feeling that this was once a boundary between ordinary life and something older.

In pasture, located on rising ground overlooking a broad valley to S, with a gentle fall of ground into the valley bottom. The townland boundary is c. 15m to NW. Circular platform (36.3m N–S; 38.5m E–W) defined by a scarp and enclosed by a fosse with an external bank. The scarp (H 1.4m) at N retains a slight internal lip, suggesting that there was originally a bank here with a width of c. 3.5-3.8. The fosse (Wth 3m) is well defined and flat-based. The external bank (Wth 2m at N, 3.3m at S; int. H 0.35-0.4m; ext. H 0.4m at N, 0.8m at S) is low and relatively narrow, with stones protruding randomly from its sides. At S the fosse and external bank take the form of a terrace with a scarp on its outer edge topped by a slight lip. The interior is level, except for the SE quadrant where there is a marked slope down to E. A low linear S-facing scarp (H 0.4m) extends from the perimeter at ENE for c. 15m to SW through the interior, ending at a low stony rise at the stump of a hawthorn tree roughly in the centre of the interior. At E a slump (Wth 2m) in the scarp drops to a passage (Wth 2.7m) across the fosse, defined on the N side by a S-facing scarp (H 0.55m), incorporating large stones, and on the S side by a more degraded S-facing scarp (H 0.3m). There is a corresponding break in the external bank. These features may be modified remnants of an original entrance. There is also a break (Wth 2.6m) in the scarp at W with a corresponding low area in the external bank, but these appear to be of relatively recent date. Two irregular-shaped quarry pits cut through the scarp and extend into the interior, one at SE (12m NE–SW; 8.5m NW–SE; D over 2m) and another at the SW (7m NE–SW; 6.5m NW–SE; D c. 2m), and disturbance to the fosse and external bank is also evident at these points. Relict cultivation ridges, on a roughly NE–SW axis, traverse the interior. Grass cover, with perimeter sparsely ringed with hawthorn. Another rath (MA102-019----) is located c. 230m to E. Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy Date of upload: 26 September 2022

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