Ringfort (Rath), Screeboge, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Ringforts
What survives at Screeboge is easy to overlook, which is precisely what makes it worth pausing over.
Set on a north-east-facing slope in open pasture, this rath, or earthen ringfort, presents itself as a gently raised circular platform roughly 32 metres across, its edges defined partly by a low bank of earth and stone and partly by a scarp of natural ground. Ringforts were the typical farmstead enclosures of early medieval Ireland, built to protect a household and its livestock, and thousands of them survive across the country in varying degrees of preservation. This one is quietly typical in form, yet particular in its details.
The enclosure is defined along its south-eastern to west-south-western arc by a constructed bank, just 2.4 metres wide and roughly 20 centimetres high, with a shallow external fosse, or ditch, running alongside it. Where the bank fades, the natural slope of the ground takes over, doing the work of enclosure without human effort. A gap of about 3 metres in the bank on the south-south-east side is thought to mark the original entrance. By 1976, a second outer bank had been recorded at the site, suggesting the enclosure was once more elaborate than it appears today. That outer bank has since vanished entirely at ground level, absorbed back into the pasture, leaving only the inner circuit to hint at what was once a more substantial arrangement.