Fort, Tennalough, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Ringforts
In the pasture at Tennalough, a circular patch of ground rises almost imperceptibly above its surroundings.
The rise is only a few centimetres, the enclosing bank barely reaches ankle height, and the shallow ditch outside it has all but disappeared into the soil. To a passing eye it is simply a slightly uneven field. What it actually represents is a ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish countryside, an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, here reduced by centuries of grazing and weathering to the faintest of outlines.
The earthwork is roughly 34 metres across, defined by a low bank of earth and stone about 3.7 metres wide and no more than 0.4 metres high, with traces of an external fosse, a defensive ditch, running just outside it. A survey carried out in 1976 noted details that have since vanished entirely from the surface: an original entrance facing east, and a substantial internal bank that divided the interior into two unequal portions. That internal division is unusual, suggesting a more complex arrangement of space within the enclosure than the standard single domestic area. Whether it reflected separate functions, different periods of use, or the needs of a particular household is now impossible to say with certainty, since the bank itself is no longer detectable at ground level.