Forts, Forgney, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Ringforts
Two ringforts within a hundred metres of each other: it is not an arrangement you encounter every day, and the quiet pastureland of Forgney in County Longford is an unlikely setting for such a pairing.
The more closely examined of the two sits on a terrace cut into a north-east-facing slope, its oval outline measuring roughly 42 metres from west-north-west to east-south-east and 32.5 metres from north-north-east to south-south-west. A ringfort, broadly speaking, is an enclosed farmstead of early medieval date, typically circular or oval and defined by one or more earthen banks; thousands survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation, though pairs set so close together are less common.
A report from 1976 recorded the essential details of this one. The enclosure is defined by a low bank of earth and stone accompanied by an external fosse, the term for a ditch dug to reinforce the boundary, with the spoil often thrown inward to build up the bank. The outer edge of the monument survives as a broad, low scarp, nowhere rising more than 0.7 metres and in places barely 0.2 metres above the surrounding ground. Whatever entrance once broke the circuit of the bank has long since been smoothed away and is no longer recognisable on the ground. Its neighbour lies about a hundred metres to the west, close enough to suggest the two were at some point in the same family or community's orbit, though whether they were contemporary or separated by generations is a question the earthworks alone cannot answer.
