Ringfort (Rath), Glenawillin, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Glenawillin, Co. Cork

In the garden north of Ballytrasna house in Glenawillin, County Cork, a ringfort sits in a state of quiet compromise between ancient construction and modern intrusion.

A shed has been built directly onto the line of its bank, the interior surface has been cut up by machinery, and trees have been planted around and within it. Yet the structure itself endures, its circular earthen enclosure still legible in the landscape despite everything that has happened since it was first raised.

The rath, as this type of earthwork enclosure is known in Irish, measures roughly 30.9 metres across on its north-south axis. Its earthen bank, which rises to an internal height of 1.4 metres and an external height of up to 2.1 metres, runs from the south-southwest to the east-northeast and is faced with stone on its inner side. Along the southern stretch, a low bank is topped by a stone wall. Raths were typically built during the early medieval period, serving as enclosed farmsteads for a family of some local standing; the earthwork bank defined the boundary of the domestic space and offered a degree of protection for livestock. Attached to this example, just to the south of the enclosure, is a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that would originally have been used for storage and possibly as a refuge. The combination of rath and souterrain is reasonably common across Munster, but each site carries its own particular history of use, survival, and damage.

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