Fort, Corry, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Ringforts
In a field in County Longford, there is a circular enclosure that most walkers would pass without a second glance.
What remains of this ringfort at Corry sits on a gentle rise in pasture, and even calling it a ruin is generous. Only the southern and eastern arc of its original earthen and stone bank survives with any legibility, rising to roughly half a metre at its highest point and spreading across a width of about five metres. The northern half has been levelled entirely, leaving no trace at ground level. What you are looking at, in other words, is less than half of a structure that was already modest in scale, measuring some twenty-six metres across.
Ringforts, which are the most common monument type in the Irish landscape, were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, built to protect a household, its animals, and its stores. They were usually defined by one or more banks of earth or stone with an external ditch, known as a fosse, running around the outside. At Corry, a report made in 1976 noted the presence of just such a fosse, along with a suggestion that the original entrance to the enclosure had faced roughly south-southwest. By the time more recent observations were recorded, neither the fosse nor any clear entrance feature could be identified. The land has continued to do what farmland does, absorbing and erasing the boundary between the agricultural past and the agricultural present.