Ringfort (Rath), Kiltycon, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kiltycon, Co. Longford

On a west-northwest-facing slope of pasture in County Longford, the remains of an early medieval ringfort have been quietly absorbed into the field system around them, so thoroughly that the original entrance has been lost entirely.

What survives is a raised, roughly oval platform measuring approximately 58 metres north to south and 42 metres east to west, its outline traceable partly through existing field boundaries and partly through the ghost lines left by boundaries that have since been levelled. The overall shape, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837, was a large, roughly heart-shaped enclosure, labelled simply as "Fort".

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when defined by earthen banks, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its inhabitants within a circular or oval bank and an external fosse, the latter being a ditch dug to reinforce the defensive profile of the earthwork. At Kiltycon, the field boundaries along the eastern, southern, and west-southwest sides of the enclosure almost certainly incorporate that original bank and fosse, the landscape in effect recycling the ancient structure into its own geometry. A survey note from 1990 recorded a stony spread visible in the western interior, possibly the remnant of a structure or surface, but by the time subsequent observation was made, that feature had vanished from view, leaving no obvious trace above ground.

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