Ringfort (Rath), Drumcoo, Co. Monaghan
Co. Monaghan |
Ringforts
A faint rise in a pasture field in County Monaghan is almost all that remains of what was once a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, typically a circular enclosure of earth and timber used as a farmstead and defended residence during the early medieval period.
It is easy to walk past without noticing anything at all, which is partly what makes it worth pausing over.
The site sits just off the crest of a drumlin ridge running roughly north-northeast to south-southwest, a landscape feature formed by glacial activity, where long whale-backed hills of boulder clay ripple across counties like Monaghan. A curve in a field bank once traced the outline of the rath from the northeast to the south, but that bank has since been removed, leaving only a slightly raised circular area of grass, measuring approximately 27 metres north to south and 25 metres east to west, still just perceptible beneath the surface of the surrounding pasture. The broad, shallow earthwork that defines it has survived, though barely, and the eye has to adjust before the circle resolves itself out of the ordinary contours of the field.