Ringfort (Rath), Baile Mhic Íre, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ringforts
Beneath a Cork farmyard, the curved outline of an early medieval settlement is still trying to make itself known.
At Baile Mhic Íre, a ringfort, or rath, the most common type of enclosed farmstead in early medieval Ireland, once occupied a southwest-facing slope in what is now pastureland. These circular enclosures, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, served as the defended homesteads of farming families between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. Here, the enclosure measured approximately 38 metres in diameter, a modest but respectable example of a type that numbers in the tens of thousands across the Irish countryside.
The site appears clearly on the 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, drawn as a complete circular enclosure, its form still intact enough to be recorded with some confidence. By the time the 1940 OS map was produced, the eastern side had been truncated by farm buildings, the slow creep of agricultural expansion beginning to overwrite the older plan. What survives today is a stretch of earth and stone bank, rising to about 1.4 metres in height, running from the southern arc around to the west, and now planted with coniferous trees. The interior of the enclosure has been absorbed entirely into the working farmyard, the ancient domestic space repurposed without ceremony across the centuries.