Fort, Annaglogh, Co. Monaghan
Co. Monaghan |
Ringforts
On a broad hilltop in Annaglogh, County Monaghan, there is a circular earthwork that appears on only one edition of its Ordnance Survey map, rendered in the distinctive gothic lettering reserved for antiquities, and then, as far as cartographic record is concerned, quietly forgotten.
The 1834 OS 6-inch map shows it as a faint circular enclosure roughly 35 metres across. After that single appearance, it drops from the official record entirely.
When someone took a closer look in 1968, the structure was still legible on the ground, if only just. It measured approximately 30 metres north to south and 27 metres east to west, defined by the surviving base of an earth and stone bank. At its most measurable point, on the east-northeast arc, the bank base was 1.7 metres wide, narrowing to 0.8 metres at the top, with an internal height of around 45 centimetres and an external height of about 60 centimetres. There was no visible fosse, the term for the external ditch that typically accompanies an Irish ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead common from the early medieval period. The entrance, about 2.2 metres wide at its base, faced east, which is a fairly typical orientation for such enclosures. A lane running roughly east-northeast to west-southwest had been cut directly through the interior, bisecting whatever remained of the original layout. By 2000, the entire area had been swallowed by furze, the dense, thorny scrub that colonises neglected upland ground with considerable efficiency, leaving little visible at the surface.