Ringfort (Rath), Curraghoo More, Co. Cork

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Ringfort (Rath), Curraghoo More, Co. Cork

Sitting in open pasture on a west-facing slope in north Cork, this ringfort conceals something that sets it apart from the thousands of similar enclosures scattered across the Irish countryside: at its centre lies a fulacht fiadh, a type of ancient cooking site typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and charcoal, formed by the repeated heating of stones and their use to boil water in a trough.

The two monument types are not always found together, and their co-location here adds a layer of complexity to what might otherwise seem a straightforward example of an early medieval farmstead.

The enclosure itself measures roughly fifty metres across on its east-west axis and is defined by an earthen bank standing about 1.8 metres in height on its interior face. A fosse, essentially a defensive ditch, runs around the northern and eastern arc, dropping to a depth of around 1.3 metres. There is a clear gap of nearly six metres in the bank on the eastern side, most likely the original entrance. The interior slopes down toward the south and is now heavily overgrown, cut through by small streams that have complicated any reading of the ground surface. A field boundary running north to south along the site appeared on an Ordnance Survey map as early as 1935 and, despite being partially marked with hachuring that might suggest antiquity, turns out to be a more recent farm laneway rather than a feature of archaeological significance.

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