Ringfort (Rath), Monataggart, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Monataggart, Co. Cork

A section of old field fence running across a Cork pasture turns out, on closer inspection, to be something considerably older.

The northern arc of a ringfort, a type of circular earthwork enclosure built predominantly during the early medieval period and used as a farmstead or defended residence, has been quietly absorbed into the boundary of a working field at Monataggart in mid Cork. The rest of the enclosing bank has been levelled, leaving this one surviving curve doing double duty as both archaeological remnant and modern farm infrastructure.

Ordnance Survey maps from 1842, 1903, and 1938 all show the site as a hachured circular enclosure, the standard cartographic shorthand of the period for a raised earthwork with sloping sides, measuring roughly 55 metres in diameter. By the time P. J. Hartnett recorded it in 1939, the entrance could still be identified on the eastern side, and he noted a diameter of 172 feet, consistent with the later metric figure. That the enclosure appears on three successive OS surveys spanning nearly a century suggests it remained reasonably legible as a feature well into the twentieth century, even as agricultural pressure gradually reduced most of the bank to the level of the surrounding pasture.

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