Ringfort (Rath), Lisduggan, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lisduggan, Co. Cork

Between archaeology and agriculture, this modest earthwork in Lisduggan has quietly become a potato field.

The circular enclosure, measuring roughly 35 metres across, is the kind of site that Irish farmers have worked around, and occasionally worked within, for generations. Known as a rath or ringfort, it is an early medieval homestead enclosure, typically dating from roughly 500 to 1000 AD, defined by a raised earthen bank and an external fosse, the shallow surrounding ditch that was dug to provide the material for the bank itself. Here, that fosse has found a second life as a laneway along the eastern side, pressed into the practical service of whoever tends the land today.

The enclosure itself is in reasonable structural shape, even if nature has done its best to reclaim the bank. The earthen rampart survives to about a metre in height on its outer face and roughly 0.6 metres on the interior, and remains heavily overgrown. There are two breaks in the bank: a southern gap about 5 metres wide, still marked by an entrance gate, and a second opening to the northwest that has been swallowed by vegetation. What distinguishes this particular site, beyond the vegetable crop growing inside it, is its relationship to another ringfort lying approximately 200 metres to the north. Paired or clustered ringforts are not unknown in Ireland, and their proximity here raises questions, largely unanswered, about how the two enclosures related to one another in use and in time.

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