Ringfort (Rath), Glengarriff, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Glengarriff, Co. Cork

On a north-facing pasture slope outside Glengarriff, a shallow ring of earth sits quietly in the grass, easy to miss and easier still to mistake for a natural quirk of the terrain.

It measures roughly 22 metres across, enclosed by a low earthen bank that rises only about 40 centimetres above the surrounding ground, with a fosse, a defensive ditch, running between it and a second, even lower outer bank. The whole thing is partially softened by hawthorn scrub creeping across the banks and into the interior.

What lies here is a rath, the Irish term for an earthen ringfort, a class of monument built and occupied predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands of them survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation, having served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or household of some local standing. They range from modest single-banked enclosures to elaborate multivallate structures with multiple concentric rings of bank and ditch, and this example falls toward the modest end of that spectrum. The double enclosure, with its inner bank, intervening fosse, and outer bank, represents a slightly more considered piece of construction than the simplest examples, though the low surviving heights suggest considerable erosion over the centuries. The eastern section of the outer bank is the best-preserved part, surviving as a slight but discernible rise in the ground where the rest has all but levelled off.

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Pete F
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