Ringfort (Rath), Coolykeerane, Co. Cork
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Ringforts
What makes this ringfort at Coolykeerane quietly arresting is its position: it sits right at the lip of a precipitous, wooded slope falling away to the north-west and the River Blackwater below.
Most raths, as these early medieval farmstead enclosures are known, occupy positions chosen for visibility or defensibility on open ground. Here, the builders worked with a hillside that drops sharply away, and the earthwork had to be adapted accordingly, with the northern interior raised to keep the enclosed ground reasonably level.
The site is subcircular, measuring around 29 metres north to south. Where the natural slope does much of the defensive work on the north-west side, a scarp of roughly two metres height takes the place of a built-up bank, now carrying a field boundary along its top. To the south and south-west, where the ground is less dramatically inclined, a proper earthen bank survives, standing about 1.3 metres on the interior face and 1.6 metres on the exterior. A fosse, the external ditch that would once have added considerably to the impression of enclosure, still traces itself as a very shallow depression at the bank's outer base, worn almost flat over centuries of pasture. There are two breaks in the circuit, one to the north-north-east and one to the south-south-east, the latter likely representing the original entrance. The grass-covered interior slopes gently down toward the north-east, a reminder of the care taken to reconcile a designed enclosure with an awkward, sloping site.