Ringfort (Rath), Glennahulla, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ringforts
In a level pasture in Glennahulla, north Cork, there is a ringfort that you cannot see.
The ground gives nothing away, no rise, no dip, no shadow in the grass. Whatever once stood here has been levelled so completely that the site exists now almost entirely as a cartographic memory.
Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were enclosed farmsteads built predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They typically consisted of a circular earthen bank and ditch surrounding a family's dwelling and outbuildings. This particular example measured approximately forty metres in diameter, a modest but not unusual size, and was recorded on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1842, where it appeared as a hachured circular enclosure, the standard convention for depicting an earthwork in relief. At some point between that survey and the present, agricultural activity removed all visible trace. What makes the location quietly remarkable is that it is not alone: a second ringfort survives roughly eighty metres to the west in the same field, catalogued separately. Two enclosures in such proximity suggest the area was once a more substantial settled landscape than the current, unmarked pasture implies.