Ringfort (Rath), Deelish, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Deelish, Co. Cork

Sitting in rough grazing land near Deelish in mid Cork, this earthen ringfort has quietly held its shape for well over a thousand years, its interior dipping into a distinctive saucer-like depression that visitors find oddly disorienting at first glance.

The outer bank, still standing to around three metres in height and now heavily planted with trees, gives the whole structure an air of enclosure that is unusual even by the standards of Irish ringforts, which are among the most common monument types in the country. Ringforts, also known as raths, were typically built during the early medieval period as enclosed farmsteads, their earthen banks defining domestic and agricultural space rather than serving any serious military function.

The site measures roughly forty metres across, defined by that substantial earthen bank and accompanied by a shallow external fosse, the term for the ditch dug when the bank material was first thrown up. An entrance faces south-east, the preferred orientation for many such enclosures, likely for practical reasons of light and shelter. In the north-eastern quadrant there is what may be a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that was commonly used in early medieval Ireland for storage or as a place of refuge. When P. J. Hartnett visited and recorded the site in 1939, he noted what he described as a deep outer fosse, suggesting that the external ditch was more pronounced at that time than it now appears, erosion and decades of agricultural activity having since softened its edges.

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