Earthwork, Forgney, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Forgney, Co. Longford

On the southern slope of the Hill of Forgney in County Longford, something square lies buried beneath the grass, invisible to anyone walking across it.

It shows up only from above, as a cropmark, the kind of ghostly outline that appears in aerial or satellite imagery when buried features cause the vegetation above them to grow differently, subtly betraying what lies beneath through variations in colour and height.

The feature is a square-shaped earthwork, approximately fourteen metres across, and it sits in open grassland without any obvious surface trace. What makes it more intriguing is that it does not sit alone. A second square earthwork of similar character lies roughly forty metres to the west, suggesting the two may be related, part of the same original arrangement or perhaps from successive phases of activity on this low hillside. Square enclosures of this kind in Ireland are associated with a range of periods and functions, from early medieval settlement enclosures to prehistoric ritual sites, and without excavation it is not possible to say which applies here. The cropmark evidence alone tells us the shape and approximate scale, but not the story behind it.

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