Ringfort (Rath), Kilberrihert, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kilberrihert, Co. Cork

Within this west-facing pasture in North Cork, a quarter of a carved stone disc still sits inside an earthen enclosure that has been slowly dissolving back into the landscape for centuries.

A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure built during the early medieval period, typically as a farmstead, defined by one or more earthen banks and an outer ditch. This particular example measures just over forty metres across, and its bank, though considerably worn on the southern and south-eastern sides, still stands nearly one and a half metres above the outer ground level in places. The interior has been planted with coniferous trees, which lends the site an atmosphere quite different from the open grazing land surrounding it.

The more unusual detail here is the stone recorded by a researcher named Bowman in 1934. At that point the object was already broken, and most of it had been repurposed for drainage work somewhere nearby, as loose stone on a working farm tends to be. What Bowman described was a circular, composite stone disc, originally around two feet in diameter and seven inches thick, with a small circular hole, roughly two and a half inches across, cut through its centre. The function of such an object is not recorded in what survives, but perforated stone discs are known from early medieval and prehistoric Irish contexts and have been associated with everything from land boundaries to ritual use. Compounding the interest of the site is the suggestion that a church site may lie within or close to the interior, which would make this not simply a domestic enclosure but a place with possible ecclesiastical significance, though the two types of site are not always as distinct as they might seem.

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