Ringfort (Rath), Cornagillagh, Co. Leitrim
Co. Leitrim |
Ringforts
In the Glenade valley in County Leitrim, a circular earthwork sits on a south-facing slope without appearing on any map.
The only way it came to be documented at all was through vertical aerial photography, which revealed the tell-tale circular outline that ground-level observation had apparently never prompted anyone to record formally. It is the kind of site that rewards patience and a certain cast of mind: easy to walk past, genuinely invisible to anyone not already looking for it.
The earthwork is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that was the dominant settlement form in early medieval Ireland, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. This example measures around 50 metres in diameter and is defined by a grass-covered earthen bank, typically three metres wide, which survives best along its western to north-north-eastern arc. Elsewhere the bank has been reduced to little more than a low scarp, around 25 centimetres high in places. There is no surviving fosse, the external ditch that commonly accompanies such banks, and no identifiable original entrance. A later field boundary cuts across the eastern perimeter on a north-north-east to south-south-west line, a reminder that agricultural use has continued to reshape the landscape long after whoever built the rath was forgotten. The River Bonet runs roughly 220 metres to the south-west, which would have made this a practical location for an early farming household, close enough to water without sitting on the valley floor itself.