Ringfort (Rath), Kilberrihert, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kilberrihert, Co. Cork

What makes the ringfort at Kilberrihert quietly odd is not the fort itself but what was found along its eastern edge.

On that side, the rampart was observed to curve inward in a way that formed three nearly circular hollows, each roughly fifteen feet across. That kind of feature is unusual. Ringforts, which are enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, are common across Ireland, but the internal geometry described here does not correspond to a standard arrangement.

When Bowman recorded the site in 1934, the earthwork was still legible on the ground. It sat on land belonging to a Mr O'Callaghan, presenting as a single-ramparted enclosure around forty yards in diameter. The bank stood between four and seven feet high, the fosse, the outer ditch, reached about three feet in depth, and the interior was raised roughly three feet above the level of the surrounding field. That raised interior suggests the enclosed area was artificially built up, which is consistent with the accumulation of occupation material over time. The site appeared on Ordnance Survey six-inch maps in 1842, 1905, and 1937, each time rendered as a hachured circular enclosure with a diameter of approximately twenty-five metres. Since those observations were made, the earthwork has been substantially levelled, and only a low rise now marks the area where it once stood in pasture on a gentle south-west-facing slope.

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