Fort, Ballynamanagh, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Ringforts
In a flat field of low-lying pasture in County Longford, there is almost nothing left to see, and that near-absence is itself part of the story.
What once stood here was a ringfort, a type of enclosed circular settlement common across early medieval Ireland, typically formed by a bank of earth or stone with a ditch, known as a fosse, running around the outside. By 1837, when the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map was drawn up, it was still recognisable enough to be marked and labelled simply as "Fort". That label is one of the few things that has outlasted it.
A field inspection recorded in 1976 found a raised circular area roughly 31 metres in diameter, still edged by a bank of earth and stone, with the external fosse visible. The original entrance could not be identified even then, suggesting the site had already suffered considerable disturbance. In the decades that followed, the remainder was levelled further, and what survives now amounts to a low, irregular rise reaching no more than 0.6 metres at its highest point. The fosse, the bank, the plan of the enclosure, all of it is largely gone, absorbed back into the working farmland around it.