Stranoodan fort, Stranoodan, Co. Monaghan

The raised interior measures roughly 31 metres across, and what makes the site quietly compelling is the asymmetry of its surviving earthen bank: on the interior side it rises only about a quarter of a metre, while on the exterior it climbs to two and a half metres, giving the enclosure a much more imposing face to the outside world than a casual glance from within would suggest.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They served as enclosed farmsteads, the bank and fosse (a surrounding ditch) providing a degree of protection for a family and their livestock. At Stranoodan, the fosse runs from the south-west around to the east, and there are traces of what appears to have been an outer bank still visible to the west and north-west, hinting that the original enclosure may have been more elaborate than what survives today. The entrance, on the south-east-facing side, is a narrow gap just over a metre wide at the base, approached by a low causeway crossing the fosse. A later field bank now cuts straight across the interior from north to south, a reminder that the enclosure was absorbed into the working farmland around it long after its original purpose was forgotten. A second rath survives approximately 190 metres to the south-east, suggesting this part of Monaghan was reasonably well settled in the early medieval period.