Gray's Fort, Leitrim, Co. Leitrim

No earthwork rises from the ground, no ditch or bank breaks the grass, and a visitor standing on the spot would have little reason to pause. Yet the place has a name, and two of them at that, which suggests that something once stood here that local memory considered worth preserving.

The site sits on the eastern bank of the Shannon at the point where the canal joins the river at an acute angle. That canal was once no more than a small stream, which makes the geometry of the place more interesting historically; a promontory fort, which is a type of enclosure that uses natural water features or cliffs to defend one or more sides rather than relying solely on constructed earthworks, would have had a ready-made arrangement here, with water on at least two sides. The 1835 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map names it as "Gray's fort", though it is not actually drawn in, meaning the surveyors knew the name without being able to record a visible feature. By the 1911 edition the name had shifted to "Sean's fort", the Irish word "sean" meaning old, which is a common placeholder in Irish place-names for a site whose origins have become obscure. Whether the earlier name referred to a family called Gray or to some other association is not recorded.