Ringfort (Rath), Cloghleafin, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Cloghleafin, Co. Cork

What survives of this early medieval enclosure in the level pasture at Cloghleafin is less than half a circle, yet that fragment carries enough information to read the site clearly once you know what to look for.

A rath is an earthen ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that once dotted the Irish countryside in its thousands, typically dating from the early medieval period roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Here, an arc of earthen bank running from south to north-northeast is all that physically remains above ground, its interior face rising about half a metre and its exterior face reaching 1.3 metres, with a shallow external fosse, or ditch, still just traceable alongside it. The ground enclosed by the arc sits slightly higher than the surrounding field, a characteristic feature of ringforts where centuries of occupation raised the interior level relative to the land outside.

The 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded the site as a complete hachured circular enclosure roughly thirty metres in diameter, and noted a limekiln sitting within the south-south-east part of the bank. A limekiln was a stone furnace used to burn limestone and produce agricultural lime for soil improvement, and the presence of one built directly into the bank suggests the ringfort was already being cannibalised for practical use by the nineteenth century. By the time the 1905 and 1906 Ordnance Survey maps were drawn, the record showed only the surviving arc from south-west to north-east, with a kink in the field boundary marking where the south-east portion of the enclosure had once run. Quarrying along the southern line of the bank and fosse has accounted for the loss on that side, removing the very material that once defined the monument's full circuit.

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