Ringfort (Rath), Clyderragh, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Clyderragh, Co. Cork

In a field given over to tillage on a south-east-facing slope in north Cork, a low arc of earth curves quietly through the landscape, largely unannounced.

Locals call it simply "the fort", which is a reasonable summary of what it once was: a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of roughly circular enclosure that farmers and minor lords built across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, to mark out a homestead and provide a degree of defence or at least a sense of boundary.

The surviving remains form an arc of around 21 metres running from south to west-north-west. What defines it on the ground is a scarp, a cut or sloped face in the earth, rising just over a metre in height, with a shallow external fosse, essentially a ditch, running alongside it at a depth of about 25 centimetres. The ground falls gently from the top of the scarp down toward what would have been the interior of the enclosure. The scarp itself is planted with whitethorn, the dense thorny shrub that has long been associated with fairy forts in Irish folklore and which in practical terms makes a useful barrier. By 1936, when the Ordnance Survey recorded the site on its six-inch map, the feature was already represented only as a hachured arc, a cartographic shorthand for a partial earthwork, suggesting that even then the full circuit of the original bank had been reduced to this southern and western remnant.

The site sits within working agricultural land, and the combination of tillage and centuries of weathering has worn it down considerably from whatever form it first took. The whitethorn along the scarp is perhaps the most visually distinctive element remaining, the kind of thorny fringe that has preserved many a ringfort from the plough simply because no farmer wants to clear it.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Ringfort (Rath), Clyderragh, Co. Cork. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement