Ringfort (Rath), Ballyready, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballyready, Co. Cork

In a pasture on a north-north-west-facing slope in Ballyready, County Cork, a low circular mound sits quietly in the landscape, easily mistaken for a natural rise in the ground.

It is, in fact, the remains of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that was the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Tens of thousands of these sites once existed across the country, and a great many have been ploughed, built over, or simply worn away. This one has been levelled, but the ground still holds its shape.

What survives is a roughly circular raised area, approximately 28.3 metres north to south and 28.8 metres east to west, standing to a height of around 0.8 metres above the surrounding pasture. A fosse, which is a defensive ditch dug around the perimeter, can still be traced along the eastern to north-north-eastern arc of the site. The interior is level, as one would expect of a platform that once supported a household, perhaps a timber roundhouse, animal enclosures, and the small structures of daily farm life. The slight asymmetry between the north-south and east-west measurements is a small reminder that these were built by hand, not to a template, and shaped as much by the lie of the land as by any formal plan.

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Pete F
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