What is recorded here
Diméin Bhaile Ghib held a fifty-metre earthen ring with a wide outer ditch and a northeast entrance ramp. People lived inside that shallow circle before the land changed, likely tending animals or storing grain near the small stream. The fort vanished without a trace by 1984, erasing the footprints and hearth smoke of whoever called it home. Only a faint cropmark remains on satellite images, proving the ring existed but refusing to reveal whose hands built it.
Located on a fairly level landscape with a small canalised NW-SE stream just to the E. Vertical aerial photographs from c. 1950 (ACAP: V 307/1590) and 1973 (GSIAP: N 268-9) show a raised circular and grass-covered enclosure defined by an earthen bank and a wide outer fosse (max. ext. diam. c. 70m). It was described in 1970 as a raised circular area (diam. c. 50m; H c. 1.5m) surrounded by a wide, flat-bottomed fosse (Wth of base c. 3.5m; ext. D c. 0.6m) with an entrance ramp at NE, but it had been removed without trace by 1984 (SMR file). The fosse can be seen as a cropmark on Apple Maps and Google Earth images (07/05/2017).
See the attached view from the Air Corps photograph (1950s)
The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Meath' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1987). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research.
Compiled by: Michael Moore
Date of upload: 10 July 2007
Revised: 24 March 2023
ACAP – Air Corps Aerial Photographs. Baldonnel, Co. Dublin
GSIAP – Geological Survey of Ireland Aerial Photographs (c. 1973). Geological Survey, Beggars Bush, Haddington Rd., Dublin 4.
The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.
- What survives
- Recorded monument
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