Ringfort (Rath), Garrane, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Garrane, Co. Cork

A house was built on top of a ringfort here, which is not as unusual as it sounds in Ireland, but the result is that only half the original enclosure survives above ground, the western half having been consumed by the construction of Garrane House.

What remains to the east is an arc of earthen bank, its interior face still standing 1.8 metres high, the exterior a more modest 0.5 metres, offering a quiet measure of how much the surrounding ground level has changed over the centuries.

A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, typically dating from the early medieval period and associated with farming settlements or the defended homesteads of local landowners. This one was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842 as a hachured oval enclosure measuring approximately 45 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, a respectable size for such a structure. By the time later OS editions were produced in 1904 and 1937, the arc running from north to south-east had been absorbed into a field boundary that also marks part of the townland boundary, the kind of quiet administrative recycling that has preserved many an earthwork long after its original purpose was forgotten. Writing in 1934, a researcher named Bowman noted what may be the same site on the land of one Thomas Carver, describing it as a single-ramparted fort of around 31 yards in diameter and recording it as practically levelled. The surviving eastern arc suggests that assessment was not entirely wrong, though something of the structure has endured.

The site sits within the grounds of Garrane House, with an open view south across the Blackwater River valley, which gives some sense of why early medieval occupants may have chosen this particular rise. The relationship between the surviving bank, the later field boundaries, and the footprint of the house itself rewards a close look at successive OS maps as much as a visit to the ground.

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