Fort, Ullinagh, Co. Monaghan

The site sits on a north-west to south-east drumlin, the kind of elongated glacial hill that gives this part of Ulster its corrugated, rolling character. What remains on the ground is a slightly raised scarp, barely half a metre high, tracing an arc from north through east to south, with an original external diameter of roughly 35 metres. The full circular form, including the eastern arc, was recorded only on the 1834 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, where it was marked in gothic script as a "fort", the conventional notation used by early OS surveyors for ringforts and similar enclosures. Ringforts, also known in Irish as raths or lios, were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. The eastern portion of this one now coincides with the townland boundary of Ullinagh, which runs just outside the surviving scarp, suggesting the boundary was drawn to respect, or at least acknowledge, the enclosure that was already there. That the 1834 map is the only edition to show the complete circuit hints at how quickly such features were being lost even as cartographers were first documenting them.