Ringfort (Rath), Drumgerd, Co. Cavan

Co. Cavan |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Drumgerd, Co. Cavan

In a field at Drumgerd in County Cavan, a broad circular platform rises from the surrounding land, its interior measuring roughly 38.5 metres across and still visibly distinct from the terrain around it.

What makes this rath particularly notable is the survival of two substantial earthen banks encircling that interior, separated by a wide and deep fosse, parts of which remain waterlogged. A rath is an early medieval enclosed farmstead, typically built between roughly 500 and 1000 AD, in which a family and their livestock lived within a banked and ditched boundary that offered both protection and social status. The double-bank arrangement here suggests this was a more significant enclosure than the basic single-banked examples that make up the majority of surviving ringforts across Ireland.

The southern side preserves what appears to be the original entrance, marked by a wide break in the bank and a causeway crossing the fosse, the kind of deliberate gap that allowed access while maintaining the integrity of the enclosure on all other sides. The outer bank can be traced clearly from the north-west, around the eastern arc, and as far as the south-west, giving a good sense of the monument's original circuit. On the section running from south-west to north-west, a modern earthen bank has been constructed along the base of the fosse, which slightly obscures the relationship between the original features in that stretch but does not fundamentally compromise the legibility of the site as a whole.

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Pete F
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