Fort, Dromore, Co. Leitrim

Co. Leitrim |

Ringforts

Fort, Dromore, Co. Leitrim

On top of a drumlin, one of those smooth, egg-shaped hills formed by glacial drift that are so common across the midlands and north of Ireland, sits a circular earthwork that raises more questions than it answers.

The interior measures roughly 42 metres across in each direction, a broad grassy platform enclosed by a steep-sided earthen bank. Outside that bank lies a waterlogged fosse, the term for a defensive ditch, and beyond the fosse a second, lower outer bank. The original entrance has never been identified, which gives the place a quietly sealed quality, as though it declined to explain itself.

What makes the site especially intriguing is the small rectangular enclosure tucked into the southern interior, defined by low earthen banks measuring nine metres by seven. Its purpose is unknown. The main enclosure follows the ringfort tradition common throughout early medieval Ireland, when such earthworks served as enclosed farmsteads for people of some local standing, the banks and fosse discouraging cattle raiders as much as any serious military threat. The double-bank and fosse arrangement here suggests a site of some consequence within that tradition. The measurements recorded in Michael J. Moore's Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim place the outer bank at up to 2.25 metres high on its north-north-west side, and the fosse base at just over three metres wide, details that give a sense of real effort having gone into the construction, even if the earthworks are now heavily overgrown and the whole thing sits quietly beneath grass.

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