Ringfort, Gortnagrelly, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ringforts
There is a field in Gortnagrelly, Co. Sligo, where a ringfort once stood, and the most remarkable thing about it now is the completeness of its disappearance.
A ringfort, to give the term some context, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, built during the early medieval period and used as a farmstead or place of shelter. Thousands survive across Ireland in various states of decay. This one does not survive at all.
The 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded it clearly enough: a roughly circular feature approximately twenty metres in diameter, sitting on a moderate north-facing slope amid gently undulating pasture. By the time the 1913 edition of the same mapping series was produced, it had vanished from the record entirely. Sometime in those intervening decades, the monument was levelled, the earthworks flattened back into agricultural land. Nothing remains visible at ground level today.