Ringfort (Rath), Shanaghobarravane, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Shanaghobarravane, Co. Cork

In the pastureland of Shanaghobarravane in west Cork, a low oval ring sits quietly on a west-facing slope, its ancient earthwork now partly capped by a modern stone wall.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Tens of thousands of these circular enclosures once dotted the Irish countryside, each one the home and working space of a farming family. Most have been levelled by centuries of agriculture; this one survives, though only just.

The enclosure is oval in plan, roughly forty metres north to south and thirty-five metres east to west, bounded by a low bank of earth and stone that still stands about 0.7 metres high. Along one arc, running roughly north-northeast to south-southwest, a later stone wall has been built on top of the older bank, a common enough occurrence where farmers found a ready-made boundary and simply reinforced it for their own purposes. To the south, a shallow fosse, that is, a surrounding ditch, can still be traced, though at only about 0.2 metres deep it is much reduced from whatever it once was. More quietly significant is the hut site preserved in the western half of the interior, measuring approximately ten metres long and six metres wide. This is the footprint of a domestic structure, the place where someone actually lived, and its survival within the enclosure gives the site a more intimate quality than the earthwork alone would suggest.

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Pete F
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