Fort, Aghakilmore, Co. Leitrim

Co. Leitrim |

Ringforts

Fort, Aghakilmore, Co. Leitrim

A low grass mound in a boggy Leitrim field might not announce itself as anything remarkable, but the subcircular enclosure at Aghakilmore is the kind of site that rewards a second look.

What survives is an earthen bank, overgrown and softened by centuries of growth, enclosing an interior that measures roughly 26 metres north to south and 21 metres east to west. To the south-west, a band of rushes marks where a fosse once ran, a fosse being the shallow external ditch typically dug to reinforce the bank thrown up beside it. Rushes, which thrive in waterlogged ground, tend to colonise old ditches long after the earthwork itself has settled and blurred, making them a surprisingly reliable indicator of where to look.

The enclosure belongs to a class of monument often referred to loosely as a ringfort, a form of enclosed settlement that was widespread across Ireland from roughly the early medieval period onward. The bank is best preserved on the south-eastern arc, where it still stands about a metre high on the exterior face and retains a width of around 3.2 metres. Two original entrances appear to have been identified: one on the east, roughly 3.3 metres wide, and a narrower one on the south-south-east at 1.4 metres. The presence of two openings is not unusual, though the narrower southern entrance may have served a more specific, perhaps secondary, purpose. The site sits on a slight westward-facing slope within a low-lying landscape marked by rock outcrop, a setting that would have offered modest natural drainage while remaining close to workable ground. Farrelly's 1989 survey first documented the enclosure in detail, and it was later incorporated into Michael J. Moore's Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim, published in 2003.

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