Ringfort (Rath), Corraneden, Co. Cavan

What makes it quietly puzzling is not just its age but its ambiguity: the outer fosse, the ditch that would ordinarily ring the entire enclosure, is conspicuously absent along its northern, eastern, and southern arc. Where it does survive, it is narrow and deep, and accompanied by a counterscarp bank, that is, a raised ridge on the far side of the ditch, which has led some to suspect that this portion may be nothing more than a later field drain cut into the prehistoric earthwork rather than an original feature of it.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. Typically constructed between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, raths were enclosed farmsteads, the earthen banks and ditches marking out the living space of a single family or small community of some local standing. This particular example at Corraneden has an internal diameter of approximately twenty-four metres, enclosed by not one but two substantial earthen banks, each with its own fosse. The banks have been faced with stone in places, both on the inner and outer sides, which suggests either deliberate reinforcement at some point or the re-use of stone from nearby sources. The original entrance, which in most ringforts takes the form of a causeway across the ditch or a gap in the bank, is no longer recognisable here, leaving the question of how people once moved in and out of the enclosure entirely open.