Ringfort (Rath), Creagh More, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Creagh More, Co. Cork

In a pasture field on the northern bank of a stream in Creagh More, a roughly circular enclosure sits quietly in the landscape, its earthen bank still rising to two and a half metres in places.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common monument type surviving in the Irish countryside. Ringforts were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1200 AD, where a family and their livestock lived within a protected circuit of bank and ditch. Thousands survive across Ireland, though many have been levelled by agriculture over the centuries; this one has held its form.

The enclosure measures approximately 23 metres north to south and 21 metres east to west, giving it a nearly circular footprint. The earthen bank runs from the west-southwest around to the north, reaching that substantial height of 2.5 metres, and is accompanied on its outer edge by a fosse, a defensive ditch, which survives to around half a metre in depth. Elsewhere around the circuit, the boundary survives as a scarp, a natural-looking slope where the original bank has spread or eroded over time. A gap in the bank to the west-southwest almost certainly marks the original entrance, the point where a gate or wooden barrier would once have controlled access to the interior.

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Pete F
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