Ringfort (Rath), Ballyshehan, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ringforts
There is nothing to see at Ballyshehan, and that is precisely what makes it interesting.
A ringfort, or rath, once occupied a gently south-facing slope in this corner of north Cork, its circular earthen bank enclosing a space of roughly thirty metres across. Ringforts are the most common field monument in Ireland, typically dating from the early medieval period and serving as enclosed farmsteads for a single family and their livestock. This one has been levelled entirely, leaving no visible trace on the surface of the pasture that now covers it.
The site was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, shown as a hachured circular enclosure, which is the cartographic shorthand surveyors used to indicate a raised bank or earthwork. Alongside it, on the south-south-west of the bank, a lime kiln was also marked. Lime kilns were a common feature of the rural Irish landscape, used to burn limestone and produce quicklime for agricultural use, and their presence beside a ringfort bank is not unusual since the earthwork itself would have offered a convenient windbreak or structural support. At some point after that survey was made, the monument was removed, most likely through agricultural clearance. A townland boundary running north-west to south-east now cuts across the area where the fort stood, bisecting it off-centre to the south-west. The only remaining evidence of the enclosure's existence is a soilmark visible in aerial photography, where differences in soil composition and moisture retention betray the ghost of the old bank beneath the grass.