Fort, Rathmore, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Ringforts

Fort, Rathmore, Co. Longford

In the quiet pastureland of Rathmore in County Longford, a circular earthwork once rose from a gentle north-east-facing slope, its bank, fosse, and outer ring marking out a space roughly 34 metres across.

Today, none of that is visible to the eye on the ground. The monument has been levelled entirely, and the only way to see what was once there is to look down from above, where aerial photography reveals it as a cropmark, the buried outline of the old bank and fosse causing subtle differences in how the grass or grain grows above them.

A report from 1976 described the site in its partially surviving state: a raised circular area enclosed by a low bank of earth and stone, with a shallow intervening fosse, which is the ditch that typically runs alongside the bank of such enclosures, and traces of a further outer bank beyond that. Even then, the original entrance could not be identified. Earthwork enclosures of this kind are broadly associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, often serving as the enclosed farmsteads of a single family or a small community, though without excavation it is difficult to say more about who built this particular one or when it fell out of use.

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Pete F
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