Ringfort (Rath), Garryantaggart, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Garryantaggart, Co. Cork

Beneath a pasture on a south-facing slope in Garryantaggart, County Cork, lies a ringfort that has effectively ceased to exist above ground.

A rath, as this type of enclosure is commonly known, was typically a circular earthen bank and ditch enclosing a farmstead, used throughout early medieval Ireland as a form of domestic settlement and land demarcation. Thousands survive across the Irish countryside, some impressively intact. This one does not.

The only documentary evidence of its existence comes from the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, which records a hachured circular enclosure at this location, with a diameter of approximately twenty-two metres. Hachuring on early OS maps was a standard cartographic shorthand for earthworks and raised features, indicating that surveyors in the nineteenth century could still detect a visible bank or outline on the ground. At some point after that survey was completed, the site was levelled entirely, almost certainly through agricultural clearance, leaving no surface trace whatsoever. The grass grows over it now as if nothing were there.

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Pete F
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