Ringfort (Rath), Clonervy, Co. Cavan

This is a rath, the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland, typically built as an enclosed homestead by a farming family of some local standing, probably between the sixth and tenth centuries. The form is straightforward: a roughly circular area of raised ground, ringed by an earthen bank and a fosse, which is simply a defensive ditch dug to reinforce the bank.

The interior here measures 31.7 metres in diameter, enough space for a small cluster of timber buildings, an animal pen, and the daily workings of a rural household. The earthen bank still reads clearly on the western side of the site, though the eastern half has suffered considerably and is now poorly preserved. Most telling, perhaps, is a break in the southern arc of the bank, accompanied by a causeway across the fosse. This almost certainly marks the original entrance, the point where a family would have passed in and out of their enclosed world, crossing the ditch on a raised path of compacted earth that has outlasted everything else they left behind.