Rathnaboogh

Rathnaboogh is a early medieval ringfort in Gortaneden, County Mayo, where a 1.4-metre scarp and faint internal lip still outline a 22-metre enclosure that ploughing and weather have worn for centuries. Its south-east face is reinforced with boulders, a nearby field bank may echo an outer defence, and hawthorn, blackthorn and hazel have grown around the perimeter until the boundary belongs as much to the trees as to the people who first shaped it. Another rath stands forty metres north, a possible motte one hundred and twenty metres south, suggesting a small cluster of occupied or contested ground rather than a lonely relic.