Fort, Moy, Co. Monaghan
Co. Monaghan |
Ringforts
On the southern slope of a drumlin ridge in County Monaghan, just below a local high point, a circular patch of dense vegetation marks something older than the field boundaries surrounding it.
The enclosure measures roughly 26 metres across, and without knowing what to look for, a person could walk past it entirely, reading it as nothing more than a scrubby, overgrown rise in the ground.
What lies beneath the vegetation is the earthen bank of a ringfort, one of the thousands of such enclosures scattered across Ireland, most of them dating to the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or lises depending on regional usage, typically served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or extended kin group, the bank and accompanying fosse, or ditch, providing a degree of security for people and livestock rather than any serious military defence. At Moy, the bank survives to an external height of around one and a half metres at its best-preserved point on the south-eastern arc, while the interior face stands only about half a metre above the enclosed ground. A shallow external fosse is still traceable in places. The entrance, with a base width of approximately three and a half metres, opens to the east, which is a common orientation for ringfort entrances, possibly for reasons of shelter, drainage, or the practical matter of catching morning light. The site sits just south of the ridge summit, a position that would have offered reasonable visibility across the surrounding drumlin landscape without exposing the settlement to the full force of prevailing westerly weather.