Ringfort (Rath), Ardmore, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ardmore, Co. Cork

On a west-facing slope near Ardmore, there is a place that exists more convincingly on paper than on the ground.

A ringfort, known in Irish as a rath, once occupied this pasture: a roughly circular earthen enclosure, typically used during the early medieval period as a farmstead or dwelling, defined by one or more banks and ditches. This one measured approximately forty metres in diameter. Today, there is nothing to see.

The evidence for it comes from the 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, where it appears as a hachured circle, the conventional cartographic shorthand for an earthwork of this kind. Even by that point, a field boundary had already cut into the south-eastern side, suggesting the enclosure was being gradually absorbed into the agricultural landscape around it. At some stage after the map was made, the remainder was levelled entirely, leaving no visible surface trace in the pasture.

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