Ringforts in West Cork - Humans in the Landscape

The Interactive map

This interactive map is built in layers which can individually be switched on and off. The map can be zoomed in and out by use of the + and – buttons in the top left, or by the use of a mouse wheel.

The legend for all layers is found by moving the mouse pointer over the icon in the top right. The map is displayed within its own frame and can be moved by dragging with the mouse left button.

Clicking anywhere on the map will raise a popup box that describes the layers active at that point.

When the map first opens the hillshade layer, and all other layers are switched on. These layers include -

  • Townlands – a lot of townland borders follow streams and rivers, so if 'rivers' are switched on some townland boundaries (black lines) will be covered by blue lines.
  • Ringforts are displayed as red dots - these are Raths, earthen banked ringforts.
  • Cashels are displayed as yellow dots - these are Cashels, stone built ringforts.
  • Rivers are displayed as blue lines. They have been mapped as a single entity due to the size of the data, and so individual river names are not available.
  • Lakes are displayed in blue. The name (where known) and area in hectares is given for each lake.
  • Sea Water is blue. It has been implemented as a separate layer for convenience.
  • Bedrock outcrops are displayed in black. These are significant features in the landscape, as can be seen.
  • Hillshading in green to give a good impression of elevation and topography. Hillshading has been implemented instead of contours because of the large size of the contour data. This would take too long to load and may well cause other problems.

Any of these layers can be turned off by moving the mouse over the 'layer' box in the top right of the map. Click on a layer to enable or disable it.

Zoom in or out using the '+'and '-' buttons in the top left (recommended) or by use of the mouse wheel if you have one (less predictable). Click and drag on the map to move around.

Townland information has been obtained from logainm.ie as per this acknowledgement; Irish-language placename data by Logainm © Government of Ireland and licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Rath, Cashel, (Crannog, and Souterrain - coming later ) data was downloaded from archaeology.ie.

The Area of the Map

This map shows an area of about 155 km by 100 km covering the landscape of West Cork and the Iveragh peninsula of Kerry. This is a basic topographical map to show Raths and Cashels in the landscape, with townland boundaries also shown. The main features of the topography are included - hill slopes depicted by shading, rivers, lakes and coastline, and bedrock outcrops.

The data for those layers that have associated data will be displayed when a feature is clicked on with the left mouse button. The data needs some cleaning, which is in progress, but consists of the following:

  • Ringforts and Cashels - the SMR number, which includes a two letter county prefix, enabling the monument to be identified, followed by the townland name in which the monument occurs and that is used to name the monument.
  • Townland names in their various forms in both Irish and English (some issues with character sets yet to be ironed out). This is followed by the logainm identifying number, and then the townland area in square metres (10,000 square metres (100 x 100) is 1 hectare). The logainm number can be used to access the relevant page on logainm.ie in the form 'https://www.logainm.ie/nnnnn.aspx' where nnnnn is the logainm number displayed.
  • Lake names followed by the area of the lake in hectares. Not all lakes have names, in which case they appear as 'null', some names are incorrect and some are wrongly repeated.
  • Note how townland boundaries follow the course of rivers in many cases, and also the line of bedrock outcrops. When a lake lies between two or more townlands, often the boundaries meet in the middle of the lake.

    Townland boundaries as mapped have a nominal width of 20 m to allow for inaccuracies in data, identification of exact location etc. The coincidence of townland boundaries with the coastline, and with rivers, may be slightly inaccurate. In addition the coastline may not coincide exactly with the topographic features in the hillshading. This is because the hillshading has been created from elevation data with an accuracy of 25m - data of a btter accuracy costs a lot of money, this data is free from BlueSky.

    Smaller areas of interest will be mapped in greater detail with more data, such as geology, sediment type, and these are in progress. An initial list is below, and these links will become active as each is completed.

How this map was made

The map has been generated, using a program called QGIS2Web, from an Open Source GIS called QGIS. This software is constantly being improved and, like all open source products, is highly efficient and free. The layers have all originated from data made freely available to the public domain. There are some inconsistencies in the map, arising partly through the different sources the data came from not being in alignment either with accuracy, completeness or definition.

This map has some large datasets associated with it and performance will be slow. It is recommended that you zoom in to an area you are interested in and then move around - response will be quicker with a smaller area in view. But it is up to you - and it depends on your internet connection speed.

Read more about how these maps are made and where the data comes from.

Click here to centre the map in the screen

Click here to centre the map in the screen