Enclosure, Oggal, Co. Cavan
Co. Cavan |
Enclosures
In the townland of Oggal in County Cavan, a large circular earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, known to local people simply as a fort.
That name carries considerable weight in Ireland, where it is commonly applied to ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Whether this particular enclosure is a ringfort in the strict sense, or something older or different in function, is not certain, but the shape and scale of it invite the question.
What survives is a roughly circular area with an internal diameter of approximately 52 metres, enclosed by a low earthen bank. That is a substantial enclosure, noticeably larger than the average ringfort, which tends to fall in the 20 to 40 metre range. The bank has been levelled or disturbed along its north-eastern to south-eastern arc, and no original entrance can now be made out. The site appears on all editions of the Ordnance Survey maps, consistently rendered as a subcircular enclosure, which suggests it was a legible feature in the landscape across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries even as the bank itself was being gradually reduced.