Ringfort (Rath), Drummury, Co. Cavan
Co. Cavan |
Ringforts
A tree plantation has quietly swallowed a structure that was already old when the first Ordnance Survey mapmakers came through Cavan in the 1830s.
At Drummury, a large oval ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was a commonplace feature of early medieval Irish settlement, has been so thoroughly absorbed into a later plantation that its original entrance can no longer be identified at all.
Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were typically circular or oval enclosures defined by an earthen bank and an external ditch, known as a fosse, and they served as the defended homesteads of farming families across Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. The Drummury example was a substantial one, measuring approximately 65 metres on its longest axis and around 45 metres across, dimensions that place it towards the larger end of the type. Both the 1836 and 1876 Ordnance Survey editions recorded it as a distinct enclosure and marked it simply as "Fort", a common convention of the period. By the time more detailed ground survey work was carried out, the picture had changed considerably. The earthen bank and fosse survive with any clarity only along the northern and eastern arc; everywhere else the enclosing elements have been modified and folded into the boundary of the surrounding tree plantation, making it genuinely difficult to read the original form of the site. The interior, too, has been planted with trees and is heavily overgrown.
What remains is less a monument to look at than one to piece together, where traces of the original bank can be followed for part of their circuit before the plantation boundary takes over and the two become indistinguishable from one another.