Ringfort (Rath), Curraghnaloughra, Co. Cork
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Ringforts
Most ringforts survive in some form; this one in Curraghnaloughra, Co. Cork, has had about two-thirds of itself quarried away, leaving a single arc of earthen bank to trace what was once a complete circular enclosure.
A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, typically dating from the early medieval period and used as a defended farmstead. What remains here describes a diameter of around twenty metres, and the surviving bank still stands to a height of approximately 1.6 metres, running from north to south on a gravel knoll above the Saivnose River.
The site appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1902, marked with the hachured symbol used to denote a circular earthwork enclosure, which means it was still recognisable as a coherent feature at that point. At some stage after that survey, quarrying removed the greater part of the bank, most likely to extract the gravel of the knoll itself. The pasture that now covers the site has done the remaining earthwork no particular favours either; the surviving arc is described as heavily overgrown, its profile softened and partially obscured by vegetation. What was once a small but complete early medieval enclosure, positioned to overlook a river valley, now exists as a fragment, readable mainly to those who already know what they are looking at.