
What is recorded here
Indicated is a circular earthen fort in County Mayo, preserved beneath pasture and blackthorn rather than forgotten. Its shallow depression and curved outer fence hint that human hands shaped the rise long before the farm road skirted it. The abandoned farmstead beside the rath suggests that people still lived around the old boundary, using the land while the fort watched from its grassy centre.
In pasture, located on a rise. There is an abandoned vernacular farmstead immediately to E of the rath, access by a farm road which skirts the N−NE side of the rath.
Raised circular area (26.7m N−S; 25.7m E−W) defined by a scarp (1.6m at E, 1.7m at W). The scarp retains a low internal lip (int. H 0.2m) for a short length at E, suggesting that the rath originally had an enclosing bank with a width of c. 3.5m.
An outer ring of field fences box in the rath on all sides: A field fence, with a stone-faced external scarp, curves around the rath at S−NE at a fairly consistent distance (4-4.5m) outside the rath scarp, and a straight NNE−SSW field wall closes the gap on the E side. The curving field fence and the flat, intervening terrace-like gap between it and the rath scarp may preserve the curve of an original fosse and external bank.
The entrance may be at SE where a low section of the scarp (H 0.5m) faces a natural rise or causeway-like feature leading away from the rath.
The interior is level, and is traversed by remnants of cultivation ridges oriented NNE−SSW. A shallow depression (L 10.5m; Wth 3.6m; D 0.2m) in the SW quadrant may indicate the presence of a Man-made underground passage (MA071-038001-).
The rath interior is grassy. There is a light growth of blackthorn bushes on the rath scarp, and the outer fence is thickly ringed with blackthorn and ash trees and brambles.
Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy
Date of upload: 6 August 2021
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- What survives
- Recorded monument
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