Ringfort (Rath), Dromalour, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Dromalour, Co. Cork

A low ring of overgrown earth in a North Cork pasture might not arrest the eye, but what sits atop the rise at Dromalour was once a more substantial structure than it now appears.

The earthen bank enclosing a roughly circular area of about 38 metres in diameter still stands, though barely: the interior height reaches only around 0.7 metres, and the outer face about 0.85 metres. Beyond it runs an external fosse, a defensive ditch, still traceable to a depth of about 1.1 metres. Much of the interior has reverted to scrub and reed, particularly in the eastern half, which gives the whole enclosure the look of something half-submerged in time rather than in soil.

What makes this site a little more layered than it first appears is the discrepancy between what survives and what was once recorded. A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure built during the early medieval period, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and used as a farmstead or defended homestead. Most are single-banked, but the Dromalour example appears to have been something more elaborate. Writing in 1934, a researcher named Bowman noted that the fort in E. Bolster's land was oval-shaped and double-ramparted, with the outer rampart already levelled by that point. The 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map corroborates this, showing the site as a bivallate enclosure, meaning one with two concentric banks rather than one. That second bank has since disappeared almost entirely, leaving the present remains as a single, heavily weathered circuit where two once stood.

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