Fort, Drumcashel, Co. Leitrim

Co. Leitrim |

Ringforts

Fort, Drumcashel, Co. Leitrim

On the floor of Glenade valley in County Leitrim, a circular enclosure roughly twenty-five metres across sits on a low north-south rise, invisible to anyone walking past it.

No earthwork bank rises above the surrounding ground, no obvious outline interrupts the overgrown terrain. What remains are scattered boulders, and the knowledge that something deliberate was once here.

The site appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1835 labelled simply as a 'Fort', and again on the 1909 edition, this time rendered as a circular hachured feature, the cartographic convention used to suggest a rounded, mounded form. The term 'fort' in this context almost certainly refers to a ringfort, a type of enclosed settlement built predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, typically consisting of a circular area defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used as a farmstead or place of habitation rather than a military fortification in any modern sense. That the feature was legible enough to map in 1835, yet is now reduced to scattered stone at ground level, points to considerable deterioration over the intervening centuries, whether through agricultural clearance, vegetation encroachment, or the gradual collapse of whatever bank once defined it. Michael J. Moore's Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim, published in 2003, records it in this diminished state, its circular shape surviving only as a faint topographic suggestion on the valley floor.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Fort, Drumcashel, Co. Leitrim. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement