Ringfort (Rath), Brittas, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ringforts
A field in North Cork holds a site that appears on Ordnance Survey maps for over a century and then, sometime around 1967, simply disappears.
What had been a substantial circular earthwork on a north-east-facing ridge slope was levelled, leaving no visible surface trace. The land returned to pasture, and the monument exists now only in cartographic memory and a handful of written records.
When Bowman recorded the site in 1934, it was still a considerable presence. Described as a triple-ramparted fort, a ringfort being a roughly circular enclosure of earthen banks used as a defended farmstead during the early medieval period, it measured around 32 yards in diameter and sat within a subdivision known locally as Lisin Ruadh, on land belonging to a F. Roche. The banks rose between four and seven feet in height, though even by then the outer works were eroding: roughly half of the middle rampart and only one-sixth of the outer rampart remained intact. A fosse, that is a defensive ditch, was recorded along the eastern, southern, and western sides on the 1936 six-inch Ordnance Survey map. Triple-ramparted ringforts are considerably less common than single-banked examples, suggesting this was a site of some local significance in its time. There is also a possible souterrain in the interior, a souterrain being an underground stone-lined passage often associated with early medieval settlement, used for storage or as a place of refuge.