Ringfort (Rath), Ballygroman, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballygroman, Co. Cork

At the northern tip of a narrow gravel ridge in mid Cork, a circular earthwork sits in the middle of cultivated land, its edges gnawed away by quarrying on the north and east sides until the damage has eaten into the interior itself.

That combination, an early medieval enclosure slowly being consumed by the very ground it stands on, gives the site an odd, unresolved quality. It is neither ruin nor monument in any tidy sense, but something in the process of being reclaimed.

The earthwork is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically consisting of a circular bank and ditch enclosing a farmstead or high-status residence. This example measures roughly 42 metres in diameter. The bank survives to about half a metre on the interior face and slightly higher, around 0.8 metres, on the exterior. Along the south-western quadrant, the external fosse, a defensive ditch dug to reinforce the bank, reaches a depth of 1.2 metres. Elsewhere the perimeter has been truncated, the result of quarrying activity that has been particularly destructive to the northern and eastern sides. The site sits in tillage ground, which means the surrounding landscape has itself been worked and reworked over generations, adding further pressure to what remains.

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Pete F
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