Ringfort, Finnure, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ringforts
One of the quarry holes sitting inside this ringfort on a north-west-facing slope in County Sligo was, until relatively recently, officially classified as a building.
The error appeared in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1995, a reminder that even formal heritage inventories are not immune to the occasional administrative oddity. The hole in question is simply a hollow in the ground, dug at some point after the ringfort itself fell out of use, and it shares the interior with at least one other quarry pit, both of them tucked towards the south and south-east of the enclosure.
Ringforts are the most common monument type in the Irish landscape, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and serving as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or household. This example at Finnure is a modest but legible specimen. It forms a raised circular area measuring approximately 29 metres east to west and 28 metres north to south, enclosed by a bank of earth and stone around 4.4 metres wide and standing about 0.8 metres above the interior. Running around the outer foot of that bank, the outline of an infilled fosse, which is simply a defensive or boundary ditch, can still be traced, roughly 4 metres wide. On the north-north-east to north-east arc, the bank itself has been removed, leaving only a low scarp of around 0.2 metres to mark the boundary. A gap in the bank on the eastern side, about 2 metres across, may be where the original entrance once stood, though whether it was always an opening or was broken through at a later date is uncertain.
The site sits in pasture on a gentle slope, the kind of setting where a ringfort can be easy to overlook until you are almost standing on it. The slight elevation of the enclosed area, even after centuries of weathering and partial demolition of the bank, gives the monument a quiet presence in the field.