Ringfort (Rath), Knockraha, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Knockraha, Co. Cork

On a south-west-facing pasture slope outside Knockraha in County Cork, there is nothing to see.

That is precisely what makes this site worth a moment's thought. A ringfort once stood here, a roughly circular earthen enclosure of the kind that was built across Ireland during the early medieval period, typically serving as a farmstead or small defended settlement. This one measured approximately 35 metres in diameter, a modest but respectable size. Today it has been levelled entirely, leaving no visible surface trace.

The ringfort does not survive in the landscape, but it survives on paper. The Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842 recorded it clearly as a circular enclosure, which means that at the time of the survey it was still legible on the ground. Sometime in the intervening period it was removed, most likely through agricultural improvement. A second levelled enclosure lies approximately 90 metres to the north, suggesting that this part of the Knockraha area once held at least a modest cluster of early medieval activity, both traces of which have since been erased.

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Pete F
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