Ringfort (Rath), Ballyfadeen More, Co. Cork

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Ringfort (Rath), Ballyfadeen More, Co. Cork

What catches the eye at this east-facing slope in Ballyfadeen More is not just the age of the earthwork but the specificity of its survival.

The main bank of this rath, a type of ringfort built from earth and used in early medieval Ireland typically as a farmstead enclosure, still stands 2.2 metres high, enclosing a roughly circular area of around thirty metres across. An external fosse, a defensive ditch, runs around the south-south-west to west of the structure, still measurable at 0.8 metres deep. The interior slopes gently downward toward the east, and a gap five metres wide in the eastern bank marks what was once the entrance.

What makes this particular site quietly curious is the detail just south of that entrance gap. A depression in the bank is flanked by two parallel linear banks, each running at right angles outward into the adjacent field, set roughly 8.5 metres apart and extending up to eight metres in length. These features may be the remains of a lime kiln, a structure used to burn limestone at high temperatures in order to produce quicklime for agricultural or building purposes. Lime kilns of this kind were common in the Irish countryside from the post-medieval period onward, and their occasional appearance within or adjacent to early earthworks speaks to the long, layered use of the same ground across very different centuries. The rath itself sits in pasture, its banks still clearly legible in the field, the fosse tracing a partial arc around its older, quieter side.

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Pete F
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