Ringfort (Rath), Lissard, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lissard, Co. Cork

At some point in the not-too-distant past, a farmer at Lissard in County Cork lowered the interior of a prehistoric ringfort by a few feet and converted it into a slurry pit.

It is an outcome that is, unfortunately, not unique in the Irish landscape, but it gives this particular site a quietly melancholy distinction among the thousands of early medieval earthworks that survive across the country.

The fort is a rath, the most common type of ringfort in Ireland, consisting of a roughly circular area enclosed by earthen banks with a fosse, or ditch, running between them. This example measures approximately 29 metres across in both directions, placing it comfortably within the typical range for such structures. Raths were generally farmsteads of the early medieval period, home to a single family and their livestock, with the banks serving as much as a marker of status as a defensive boundary. Here, two banks survive, with the outer one stone-faced, and a six-metre-wide gap breaks the inner bank on the northern side, likely the original entrance. The site sits on a west-facing slope in pasture, and a roadway to the south curves noticeably to skirt the outer bank, a small but telling sign that the monument shaped the landscape around it long after it ceased to be occupied.

The conversion of the interior to a slurry pit, which required removing material from the top of the enclosed area, has altered whatever ground-level archaeology once survived inside. The earthworks themselves remain legible on the slope, and the stone-facing on the outer bank is worth noting as a visible detail that distinguishes this fort from plainer examples nearby.

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