Ringfort (Rath), Dromaneen, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ringforts
What looks like an ordinary field boundary in the rolling pasture of Dromaneen, County Cork, is in fact the surviving fragment of an early medieval ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead, typically circular, that was once the most common form of rural settlement across Ireland.
The bank that now serves as a field fence is all that remains of what was once a complete earthen enclosure, and the gradual absorption of ancient monuments into later agricultural infrastructure is one of the quieter ways in which the Irish landscape obscures its own past.
The site has been losing ground, literally, for some time. Ordnance Survey mapping from 1842 shows it as a clearly circular enclosure roughly 40 metres across, but by the 1905 and 1936 editions of the same series it had already shifted to a slightly oval outline, suggesting ongoing disturbance. By the time a more recent survey was carried out, the enclosure had been substantially levelled, leaving an oval area measuring approximately 41.6 metres on its longer north-northeast to south-southwest axis and 29.7 metres across. Where the bank still stands, it rises about 1.2 metres on its interior face and 1.6 metres on the exterior. A slight depression to the west of the levelled section may be what remains of a fosse, the external ditch that would originally have reinforced the bank's defensive or boundary function. Rubble and tree roots have since been dumped on the surface. A record from 1934 by Bowman, writing in what was then E. O'Keeffe's land, described the fort as single-ramparted, with a diameter of about 31 yards and a bank height of around six feet, giving a useful before-and-after comparison with the more recent measurements and confirming how much has been lost across the intervening decades.