Ringfort (Rath), Derrylough, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Ringforts
In a pasture field in Derrylough, County Longford, the ground gives itself away only if you know what to look for.
A low, oval rise in the grass, roughly 44 metres north to south and 38 metres east to west, marks the outline of an early medieval ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that once dotted the Irish countryside in its thousands. Ringforts, known in Irish as ráth when their boundary was an earthen bank, were typically the homesteads of farming families of some modest standing, built during the early medieval period and sometimes continuing in use for centuries. This one has survived, though barely.
What remains is a much-reduced bank of earth and stone, now standing only about 0.3 metres high and roughly 3.3 metres wide, with a largely filled-in fosse, the defensive ditch that would originally have run around the outside of the bank. A gap of about 2.2 metres in the bank on the south-eastern side is thought to mark the original entrance, the point through which people, animals, and goods would have passed in daily life. Inside the enclosure, the ground is noticeably uneven, and the north-western quadrant preserves what may be the trace of a house site, a slight irregularity in the surface that hints at a structure long since vanished into the soil.