Ringfort, Clooneen, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Ringforts

Ringfort, Clooneen, Co. Sligo

In a field of gently rolling pasture in Clooneen, County Sligo, a low earthwork sits close to the edge of a natural drop, its unusual shape quietly announcing that the ground here was arranged with some care, a long time ago.

Most ringforts, the circular or oval enclosures that served as farmsteads during the early medieval period in Ireland, are rounded in plan. This one is roughly D-shaped, its flat side running along the south-southwest to northwest, where the natural slope of the land was apparently steep enough that no additional bank was needed to define or defend that edge.

The enclosure measures about twenty metres across in both directions and is bounded by an earthen scarp, the inner face of which rises to roughly 1.75 metres on the exterior. Outside that scarp runs a fosse, a shallow defensive ditch, approximately 4.3 metres wide and 0.4 metres deep. On the south-southeast side, a ramp three metres wide cuts across the scarped edge; this is where the original entrance would have been, allowing people, animals, and goods to move in and out of the enclosed space. From the northeast and east, the fosse disappears entirely at ground level, absorbed into the natural contours of the slope, which may be why the site appears less imposing from that approach than it does from below. The relationship between the earthwork and the steep natural fall immediately to the southwest suggests that whoever laid this out understood the ground well, using topography to do part of the work that a full circuit of banks and ditches would otherwise require.

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Pete F
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