Fort, Drumar, Co. Monaghan
Co. Monaghan |
Ringforts
Just below the summit of a small hillock in Drumar, County Monaghan, there sits an oval earthwork that most passers-by would take for a natural undulation in the field.
It measures roughly 42 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west, a grass-covered enclosure that tilts gently downward toward the south. What gives it away as something deliberate is the earthen bank along its northern and eastern edges, though even that has largely collapsed into a low scarp over the centuries. On the eastern side the bank retains an external height of about 1.6 metres, while internally it barely clears 0.3 metres, suggesting considerable slumping and overgrowth.
This kind of raised enclosure is generally classified as a ringfort, or rath, the most common type of early medieval monument in Ireland. Ringforts typically served as enclosed farmsteads, their banks and ditches providing security for a household and its livestock rather than any serious military defence. What is slightly unusual about this particular example is the absence of a visible fosse, the external ditch that normally accompanies the bank and from which material was originally dug to build it up. Whether the fosse was never cut, or has simply silted and grown over to the point of invisibility, is not clear. There are two entrances, one at the north-north-west and one at the south-south-west, each with a base width of around 1.4 metres, giving the enclosure an axis that runs from one gap to the other across the sloping interior.