Fort, Mayo, Co. Leitrim

Co. Leitrim |

Ringforts

Fort, Mayo, Co. Leitrim

In the townland of Mayo in County Leitrim, a circular earthwork sits quietly on a low rise, its original purpose unannounced and its entrance unidentified.

That last detail is quietly unsettling. Most ringforts, the enclosed farmstead settlements that dot the Irish countryside in their tens of thousands, were built with a clear way in. Here, no original entrance has been found, which leaves the site without the most basic element of its story.

The earthwork is roughly forty metres in diameter, defined by an earthen bank and a slight external fosse, the fosse being the shallow ditch that typically runs around the outside of such enclosures. Measured at the south-east, the bank is about two metres wide at its base, rises only fractionally on the interior side, but presents a more substantial face of just over two metres on the exterior. That asymmetry is typical of how these structures were designed to read from outside, projecting an impression of solidity and boundary even when the interior elevation was modest. The whole thing is now overgrown, which is itself a kind of preservation, the vegetation holding the earthen fabric in place while making the geometry harder to appreciate from ground level. The landscape around it is described as undulating and low-lying, which makes the rise on which it sits all the more deliberate a choice, the kind of slight elevation that would have afforded a commanding view across wet ground.

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Pete F
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