Ringfort (Rath), Glennahulla, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Glennahulla, Co. Cork

A low earthen ring sits in a pasture field on a gentle north-facing slope in Glennahulla, north Cork, easily missed by anyone not already looking for it.

It is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built throughout Ireland roughly between the early medieval period and the Viking Age, used by farming families as a protected compound for people and livestock. Tens of thousands once existed across the country, and while many have been levelled by centuries of agriculture, this one survives, quietly holding its shape in the grass.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring about 34 metres east to west and 30 metres north to south. It is defined by an earthen bank that still stands around 0.4 metres high on the interior side and 0.8 metres on the exterior, with an external fosse, a defensive ditch, cut to a depth of 1.4 metres. The original entrance, a causewayed gap six metres wide, faces to the south-east, the direction most ringfort entrances tend to favour. At the south-west, a cattle gap 1.5 metres across has been worn through the bank at some later point, a small sign of the site's continued use as ordinary farmland long after its original inhabitants were gone. The interior is now covered in grass, with no visible surface features remaining.

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Pete F
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