Ringfort (Rath), Kilcullen, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kilcullen, Co. Cork

A field of rough grazing near the Dripsey River in mid Cork holds something that can no longer be seen.

A ringfort once stood here, roughly 35 metres across, of the kind known as a rath, an enclosed circular farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and used as a defended homestead. Nothing of it remains above ground. It has been levelled entirely, leaving no visible surface trace.

What we know of its existence comes from the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of 1842 and 1904, on both of which it appears as a hachured circular enclosure, that is, marked with short lines radiating inward to indicate an earthwork. The site lies approximately 100 metres west of the Dripsey River, and the only hint of its former outline that persists in the landscape today is a field fence to the south of where the enclosure stood, which curves in a gentle arc from south-southeast to south-southwest, following the ghost of a boundary that no longer exists in any other form. It is a quietly useful reminder that even when an earthwork is gone, the land around it sometimes preserves the memory of its shape in the way later boundaries were drawn.

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