Ringfort (Rath), Tonyellida, Co. Monaghan

At Tonyellida, on the spine of a northwest-to-southeast drumlin ridge, the land is ordinary pasture. No earthwork breaks the surface, no raised bank catches the eye, no ditch suggests itself underfoot. A rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular enclosure typically formed by an earthen bank and ditch, was usually the farmstead of an early medieval family of some standing. Thousands survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation. This one, or at least its eastern component, has effectively vanished, leaving behind nothing but a cartographic ghost.

What makes this site unusual is the nature of its only surviving evidence. In 1793, a surveyor named McCrea produced a map of County Monaghan, and on it, at Toneyellida, he marked two adjoining enclosures side by side on the drumlin ridge. No other map, before or since, shows them. The precise location of the eastern enclosure in particular is now unknown. Whether McCrea was recording something that still existed in his time, or working from older information, or perhaps misidentifying a field boundary, cannot be said with any certainty. The western feature presumably prompted the original classification as a ringfort, but the ground itself offers no confirmation.