Ringfort (Rath), Berrings, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ringforts
In the pastureland of Berrings in mid-Cork, a near-perfect circle of raised earth sits quietly in a field, its interior choked with ferns and its earthen bank still reaching two and a half metres at its highest point to the south.
What makes this particular rath, as these early medieval enclosures are known, especially intriguing is not the earthwork itself but what was reportedly found within it: an ancient bell, possibly of ecclesiastical origin, its presence hinting at a connection to early Christian activity that the landscape alone would never suggest.
Ringforts of this kind were typically constructed between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries as enclosed farmsteads, the earthen bank serving both as a boundary marker and a means of protecting livestock. This one measures just over thirty metres in diameter, a modest but well-preserved example of the form. A roadway and a laneway run close to its northern and western edges, suggesting it has long been a fixed point around which later movement and settlement organised itself. The interior was at some point deliberately planted with trees, a detail recorded by Hartnett in 1939, though these are now gone, replaced by the encroaching ferns. The bell, noted by O'Sullivan in 1955 with a cautious question mark over its church origins, remains the site's most puzzling feature. Ecclesiastical bells from early medieval Ireland were often associated with saints or monastic communities, and their appearance at ringforts is not unheard of, though it raises questions about whether this site had a religious dimension, or whether the bell simply ended up here through later movement or deposition.