Ringfort (Rath), Liscarroll, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Liscarroll, Co. Cork

On a south-south-east-facing slope near Liscarroll in north Cork, a shallow ring in the pasture marks the outline of an early medieval ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that once housed a family of some local standing, typically surrounded by an earthen bank and ditch for security and status rather than serious military defence.

What catches the eye, once you know to look, is a two-metre-wide band of noticeably darker green grass running around the circuit, its surface scattered with stones, the ghost of a bank that has been almost entirely levelled by centuries of farming.

The 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map records it as a hachured circular enclosure roughly 35 metres in diameter, the cartographers' way of indicating an earthwork of some kind. On the ground today the enclosure measures approximately 38 metres east to west and 31.5 metres north to south, making it a slightly flattened, subcircular shape rather than a true circle. Where the bank survives best, running from the south-east round to the west-south-west, it still stands about 1.4 metres high on the exterior face and retains traces of stone facing, suggesting the original builders had reinforced the earthen rampart with dressed or stacked stone. Elsewhere that bank has been reduced almost to nothing, its interior height a mere 0.2 metres. One detail worth noting is how the interior has been deliberately raised along its southern side to compensate for the natural hillslope, a practical piece of construction that ensured the living surface within the enclosure remained relatively level rather than tilted uncomfortably downhill.

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Pete F
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