What is recorded here
Indicated is a hidden ringfort on a Mayo hill, wrapped in blackthorn and hawthorn, with a lost trackway cutting through its outer wall. The stones still mark a circular chamber above the bog, suggesting people once lived, passed or hid inside the thicket. The forking path beside the fort may have led traders, herders or travellers across the undulating land, linking the hidden ring to the wider county.
In a thicket of overgrowth, located on top of a hill, which provides good views over the surrounding sharply undulating terrain, with a broad expanse of bog to E. There is a stream on the margins of the bog c. 100m to E.
Roughly circular area (diam. c. 25m) defined on the NE arc by a stony, gravelly bank (Wth 3m; int. H 0.85m; ext. H 1.1m), reduced elsewhere to a low stony rise (Wth 2m).
Outside the stone bank at N−SSE there is a drystone field wall (H 1m) that respects the curve of the enclosure. The intervening gap (Wth 2m) between the field wall and the rath was used as a trackway or road, which originally continued beyond the rath to the NW and S, and is shown on the 1837 OS 6-inch map. The trackway is no longer extant to NW and S of the rath.
The rath interior appears to be level. It is obscured by impenetrable blackthorn and brambles. Hawthorn rings the perimeter.
Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy
Date of upload: 26 January 2021
The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.
- What survives
- Recorded monument
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