Ringfort (Rath), Kilquane, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kilquane, Co. Cork

There is a field in Kilquane, in north Cork, where a settlement once stood that has now almost entirely vanished into the ground.

Almost, but not quite. Under certain conditions, when crops grow unevenly over buried soil disturbances, the outline of the old enclosure reappears from the air as a cropmark, a ghostly circle betraying the line of a bank and fosse, the ditch and earthen wall that once defined the boundary of an early medieval farmstead.

A ringfort, known in Irish as a rath when formed from earthworks rather than stone, was the standard unit of rural settlement in Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation; this one in Kilquane does not. By the time the Ordnance Survey was mapping the area in 1842, it was recorded as a hachured circular enclosure of around 32 metres in diameter, the map convention of the period indicating an earthen mound or raised ground. When surveyors returned in 1935, the feature was still visible, though the recorded diameter had shifted slightly to around 30 metres, suggesting continued erosion or agricultural pressure over the intervening decades. At some point after that, the site was levelled entirely. It sits now in pasture on a gentle north-facing slope, and only slight undulations in the ground hint that anything lies beneath. The clearest evidence of its existence comes not from standing in the field but from looking down at it, an aerial photograph capturing the cropmark of the bank and fosse that remains invisible at ground level.

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Pete F
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