Ringfort (Rath), Berrings, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Berrings, Co. Cork

On a hilltop north of a farmyard near Berrings in mid Cork, a ring of conifers marks the outline of something considerably older than the trees themselves.

The planting makes the site oddly conspicuous from a distance, a dark circular crown on agricultural land, though it also obscures what lies beneath and within.

The earthwork is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically consisting of a circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used as a farmstead and defensive enclosure from roughly the fifth century onwards. This example measures around forty metres in diameter, defined by a single surviving bank that rises about half a metre above the interior and just over a metre on its outer face. A second bank was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1903, but no surface trace of it remains visible today. At the centre of the enclosure, partly hidden by the tree cover, is a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that would originally have served for storage or as a place of refuge. Souterrains are frequently found within raths across Ireland, and their presence often suggests the site was in active use during the early Christian period. The combination of a levelled outer bank and an interior replanted with conifers reflects the quiet attrition that has affected many such sites over centuries of farming.

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