Fort, Drumad, Co. Leitrim
Co. Leitrim |
Barrows
At the western tip of a drumlin ridge in County Leitrim, a circular earthen platform sits quietly above the surrounding landscape, its purpose still not entirely settled.
The structure has no visible entrance, which is one of the odder details about it. Most monuments of this type allowed people in and out in some discernible way, yet here the ground offers no obvious clue as to how anyone would have crossed the enclosing ditch and bank to reach the interior.
The platform measures roughly 26 metres across and is surrounded by a flat-bottomed fosse, the term used for the ditch component of an earthwork enclosure, typically dug to define and defend a boundary. Outside the fosse runs a low outer bank. The dimensions vary noticeably around the circuit, with the western side standing considerably higher than the east, partly because the platform itself slopes downward in that direction. This unevenness is likely a consequence of its position on the drumlin, a smooth elongated hill formed from glacial deposits, which gives the site its natural elevation and its commanding orientation along an east-west axis. The monument is tentatively classified as a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval enclosed settlement in Ireland, generally associated with farming families of some local standing, though the lack of an entrance and the irregularities here leave room for other interpretations.
The southwestern half of the monument is heavily overgrown, while the remainder is covered in grass and rushes. It sits in the kind of agricultural countryside where these features tend to endure simply because the ground is too awkward to plough, which is perhaps why it survives at all.