Fort, Crumlin, Co. Monaghan
Co. Monaghan |
Ringforts
On a south-facing slope in Crumlin, County Monaghan, a modest earthwork sits in a state of partial survival, its overgrown banks marking out a shape that is more ghost than monument.
What remains today is a D-shaped area, roughly twenty metres by fifteen, defined by earthen banks to the south and west. It is a fraction of what once existed, and easy to overlook entirely.
The fuller picture comes from the 1834 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which recorded the site as a small oval enclosure, approximately thirty-five metres along its north-east to south-west axis and twenty-five metres across. The cartographers marked it in gothic lettering as a fort, a term used on early OS maps to denote a ringfort, which is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more circular earthen banks and ditches. At the time of the survey, a path or farm track ran through the interior from north-west to south-east, suggesting the site had already been partially absorbed into the working landscape of the townland. In the nearly two centuries since that map was made, the north-eastern portion has been lost, leaving only the south-western segment to indicate the original extent of the enclosure.