Ringfort (Rath), Gurteenbeha, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ringforts
On a patch of north Cork farmland, a ringfort that once had not one but two encircling ramparts has been reduced to nothing more visible than a circle on an old map and a tangle of furze.
Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were the typical enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, built by families who raised a bank and ditch, or occasionally two, around their homestead for security and status. Here, that double ring survives only as a cartographic ghost, shown as a hachured circular enclosure roughly 45 metres across on the demesne land lying about 250 metres east of Gurteenbeha House.
When Bowman recorded the site in 1934, the fort was already gone, described then as a levelled double-ramparted example with a diameter of approximately 45 yards, sitting on land belonging to a C. Lane. The double rampart would have made this a more substantial construction than the typical single-banked rath, suggesting either greater resources or a heightened need for defence on the part of whoever built it. By the time Bowman noted it down, the earthworks had already been flattened, and the area had been left to the furze, the dense spiny scrub that colonises disturbed or abandoned ground across Ireland with quiet persistence.