Fort, Lagan, Co. Monaghan

Co. Monaghan |

Ringforts

Fort, Lagan, Co. Monaghan

On the 1834 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, a circular enclosure appears on a north-facing slope in Lagan, County Monaghan, labelled in the distinctive gothic lettering that cartographers of the period reserved for antiquities.

That label reads simply 'fort', and no later edition of the map repeated it. The feature does not appear to have attracted much attention since.

What survives on the ground is a slightly raised, grass-covered area somewhere between 23 and 25 metres in diameter, its edge defined by a low scarp that reaches no more than 0.7 metres at its highest point. The terrain is uneven, the shape imperfect. A ringfort, to give the type its more familiar name, is a circular enclosure typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch, used throughout early medieval Ireland as a farmstead or a place of small-scale defence. Most examples are considerably more legible in the landscape than this one. What makes the Lagan site quietly curious is the gap between what the 1834 map recorded, an external diameter of around 50 metres for the full enclosure, and what remains visible today. Whether the outer earthwork has been substantially reduced by centuries of agricultural activity, or whether the original cartographic assessment was generous, is not clear. The site sits on a shoulder towards the bottom of the slope, a position that would have offered modest elevation without full exposure to the north.

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Pete F
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