School: St Columba's, Cloonagh, Granard (roll number 12813)
- Location:
- Cloonagh, Co. Longford
- Teacher: Peter O'Reilly
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0762, Page 274
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: St Columba's, Cloonagh, Granard
- XML Page 274
- XML “Forts”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- These old fortifications are called forts, in this district. They are very numerous, as there are two in the townland of Cloonagh; three in the townland of Derrycasan, three in the townland of Larkfield, one in Kilmore, one in Toome and one in Mullinroe. The Cloonagh, Larkfield, Derrycassan, and Mullinroe forts are on elevated ground, and are in view of one another. They are the ordinary type, circular in shape, with a fence of earth, with trees or bushwood on it, around each. There is a deep trench around them, only the two in Cloonagh. The fort in Toome is not in view of the others, but it is larger, and more formidable than the rest, because the ditch is higher, and it looks as if there was a double dyke in this one, long ago.
There is a hill in this district, called locally "[?] hill" and these eleven forts are in a radius, of about a mile from this hill. On the border of this district, there are two forts in Cloughernal, one in Mr Stephenson's field, that has a double dyke around it, and the other in Mr Sheridan's field.
I heard from Mr John Kiernan, who is over 70, that his father, an old School master, told him that the belief was, that all these forts account for the name Mullinalacta, to be given to this district, as we may infer, that the Chieftains who lived in these fortifications, were not always peaceable, and that there was a slaughter, probably on [?] hill as it was a central place, hence Mullinalacta, the hill of the Slaughter. I could not find out if any person explored the interior.
