Ringfort (Rath), Lissalohorig, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lissalohorig, Co. Cork

A modern field boundary runs straight through the middle of this Early Medieval enclosure in Lissalohorig, Co. Cork, slicing a circle that was once whole into two roughly equal halves.

The division is an accidental record of how Irish farmland has been reorganised and subdivided across the centuries, indifferent to what lay beneath earlier patterns of use. The earthwork itself survives reasonably well, with an earthen bank still standing around 1.5 metres high along its western to eastern arc, and a shallow external fosse, essentially a ditch dug to provide material for the bank, still visible to the north-north-east.

The site is a rath, the commonest type of ringfort in Ireland, a class of enclosed farmstead that was the standard unit of rural settlement during the Early Medieval period, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. A typical rath consisted of a circular area, defined by one or more earthen banks with accompanying ditches, within which a farming family would have kept their dwelling house and outbuildings. The Lissalohorig example measures approximately 28 metres in diameter, placing it within the smaller to middling range for this type. It sits on a gentle west-facing slope now given over to pasture, which is not unusual; a great many ringforts across Ireland have been absorbed quietly into working farmland, their banks reduced to low ridges or, as here, interrupted by later boundaries. The landscape around them continued to be farmed, and the monuments became obstacles to be worked around rather than features to be preserved.

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