Ringfort (Rath), Ballybranigan, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Ringforts
At Ballybranigan in County Longford, a low rise in a field turns out to be something considerably older than the hedgerows and boundaries that now cut across it.
This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in the country. Thousands were built across Ireland, typically between the sixth and tenth centuries, as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or small community. What makes this one quietly interesting is its shape: where most ringforts are roughly circular, this one is subrectangular, measuring approximately 48 metres east to west and 40 metres north to south, a distinction that sets it slightly apart from the norm.
A report from 1976 recorded the monument in some detail. The raised area is enclosed by a low bank of earth and stone, and its edge is marked by a scarp, a slope or step in the ground surface, ranging from about half a metre to just under three quarters of a metre in height. On the north-western side, there is a shallow external fosse, the term for a ditch dug outside the bank as an additional boundary, though here it is modest in scale, roughly 1.2 metres wide and only 0.2 metres deep. These earthworks are the kind that can be easy to overlook in ordinary farmland, particularly where centuries of agriculture have softened the original profile. The original entrance has not been identified, and two sides of the monument have been cut through by later field boundaries running from the west-south-west and from the north, which have obscured whatever survives beneath.