Ringfort (Rath), Clonmult, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Clonmult, Co. Cork

What was once a circular earthwork enclosure in the east Cork countryside now survives only as a fragment of its former self, its bank quietly absorbed into an ordinary field fence.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised bank and ditch enclosing a farmstead. Most are between roughly 20 and 50 metres in diameter, and this one at Clonmult falls squarely within that range, measuring approximately 35 metres across.

The site sits on an east-facing slope in pasture, around 120 metres from the glen of the Kiltha river. It was still legible enough in 1936 to be recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a circular enclosure, though by the time of later survey work the southern portion had been levelled entirely. The surviving fragment of bank, now folded into a field boundary, stands about one metre high on the interior face and just over a metre on the exterior, which gives some sense of the modest but deliberate earthwork that once ran the full circuit. The interior of the fort slopes gently eastward, following the natural lie of the ground beneath it.

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