Ringfort (Rath), Deerpark, Co. Longford

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Deerpark, Co. Longford

In the fields of Deerpark, County Longford, a low swelling in the pasture marks the outline of a settlement that has been dissolving back into the landscape for centuries.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the standard form of enclosed farmstead used throughout early medieval Ireland, typically from around the fifth to the twelfth century. What you are looking at, if you know where to look, is a subcircular raised area roughly 44 metres north to south and 37 metres east to west, its edges defined by a scarp, a gentle slope or earthen drop, of between 0.3 and 0.4 metres. It sits on a low ridge in pasture, the kind of modest elevation that early farmers chose for drainage and visibility alike.

By 1976, when the site was formally noted, it still retained a wide shallow external fosse, the ditch that would once have encircled the bank and helped define the enclosed space within. That fosse has since been infilled, smoothed away by agricultural activity or deliberate levelling, and with it went much of the legibility of the monument. The original entrance, the gap in the earthwork through which inhabitants and livestock once passed, is no longer recognisable. What remains is the raised platform itself, a quiet impression in the ground that requires a certain attentiveness to read as anything other than a slight unevenness in a field.

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Pete F
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