Ringfort (Rath), Liscreagh, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Liscreagh, Co. Cork

On high pasture roughly two kilometres north-north-west of Millstreet, a circular earthwork sits so thoroughly consumed by vegetation that it has effectively merged with the landscape around it.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that was constructed in its thousands across Ireland during the early medieval period, broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Most were built to protect a family's home and livestock behind a raised bank of earth, and this one at Liscreagh follows that familiar grammar while remaining unusually difficult to read.

The earthen bank survives to a height of around 1.3 metres and encloses a roughly circular area of approximately 35 metres in diameter. Outside it runs a fosse, the shallow ditch from which the bank material was originally dug, still traceable to a depth of some 0.7 metres. A gap of about four metres breaks the bank on its western side, which is likely the original entrance. To the east, the bank has been levelled, and dense overgrowth makes any examination of that section impossible. The vegetation is not confined to the fort itself; it spreads eastward to cover a small adjoining field, folding the site into a larger tangle of scrub that effectively obscures its boundaries.

The overgrowth that frustrates the surveyor is, in its own way, a form of preservation. Ringforts that remained in agricultural use were often ploughed away or incorporated into field systems over the centuries, their banks spread and their fosses filled. This one, sitting on its elevated pasture and increasingly surrendered to thorns and scrub, has kept its essential shape intact, even if most of that shape is now inaccessible to the eye.

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Pete F
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