Ringfort (Rath), Kyle, Co. Cork
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Ringforts
A modern field fence runs straight through the middle of this ancient enclosure near Kyle in County Cork, bisecting what was once a carefully constructed circular settlement without ceremony or apparent awareness.
It is the kind of overlap between the agricultural present and the deep past that happens quietly all over Ireland, and this particular example survives only as a faint outline in boggy ground.
The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish landscape. Ringforts were typically enclosed farmsteads, built and occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, consisting of a circular area surrounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches. At Kyle, the enclosure measures approximately 34 metres in diameter. The bank has been largely levelled, but a low rise running east to west still reaches about 0.6 metres in height, and further undulations in the ground trace the original line of the bank around the rest of the circuit. The land itself is flat and boggy, which may partly explain the monument's condition; wet, low-lying ground is not always kind to earthworks over the course of a millennium or more.