Fort, Cartronlebagh, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Ringforts
A field boundary cuts straight through the middle of this ancient enclosure in Cartronlebagh, dividing it into two roughly equal halves as though the monument were simply inconvenient farmland to be parcelled up.
The southern portion has been levelled almost entirely, its presence detectable only as a faint outline in the ground. The northern half survives better, though the whole site sits on low-lying, wet terrain that has kept it waterlogged and awkward, which may, in its own way, be part of why anything at all remains.
The structure is a rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular earthwork enclosure of early medieval date, typically associated with a farmstead or small settlement and defined by one or more banks and ditches. This particular example is moderately elaborate, with a raised central platform about 25.9 metres in diameter, a surrounding bank of earth and stone, and then a fosse, an outer bank, and a second outer fosse beyond that. The double-fosse arrangement is relatively uncommon and suggests the enclosure was intended to be either well defended or conspicuously bounded, though it is impossible now to say which function dominated. Both fosses remain extremely waterlogged. The inner bank stands only 0.1 to 0.4 metres high at most, and no trace of the original entrance survives. What was once a coherent piece of domestic or territorial architecture has been reduced, by a combination of agricultural levelling and the slow persistence of damp ground, to something that requires patience and attention to read.