Ringfort (Rath), Lislevane, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lislevane, Co. Cork

On a hilltop outside Lislevane in West Cork, a nearly perfect circle of raised earth sits in open pasture, largely unremarked and unmarked.

It is easy to mistake for a natural undulation in the ground, but the regularity of its form gives it away. This is a rath, the Irish term for an earthen ringfort, and the fact that it has survived at all in agricultural land is itself a small curiosity worth pausing over.

The enclosure measures roughly 37 metres north to south and 38 metres east to west, making it almost perfectly round. A low earthen bank, reaching no more than 0.7 metres at its highest, defines the circuit, with an external fosse, or ditch, running alongside it on the outside, dipping to a maximum depth of 0.9 metres. In their original form, ringforts like this one functioned as enclosed farmsteads, most commonly associated with the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. The bank and fosse together would have provided a degree of security for a household and its livestock, though they were never fortifications in any serious military sense. Thousands of these structures once dotted the Irish countryside; a significant number have been levelled by ploughing or development over the centuries, which makes the survival of even a modest example notable.

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