Ringfort (Rath), Garrynagranoge, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Garrynagranoge, Co. Cork

In the level pasture of Garrynagranoge in North Cork, a low circular rise in the ground is easy to walk past without a second thought.

What you are looking at, if you know to look, is a rath, the earthen form of a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built and occupied predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country in varying states, and this one sits quietly in the grass, its banks worn down but its basic geometry still legible.

The enclosure measures roughly 32.9 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west, making it a fairly typical example of the smaller end of the rath spectrum. A grass-covered earthen bank survives to an internal height of about 0.4 metres and an external height of 0.6 metres, with an outer fosse, a defensive or boundary ditch, reaching a maximum depth of around one metre. The fosse is reasonably well preserved on most sides, though to the east and west it has silted or settled into little more than a shallow depression. The interior itself is saucer-shaped rather than flat, and a further linear depression, about two metres wide and 0.2 metres deep, runs from east to southwest across the southern half of the interior. What this feature represents is not entirely clear; it may be the trace of a drain, a later field division, or some internal structural element that no longer survives above ground.

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Pete F
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