Ringfort (Rath), Dromin, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
Most ringforts announce themselves clearly enough, a raised circular enclosure with a bank and ditch that even a passing motorist might clock from the road.
The rath at Dromin in north Kerry has largely lost that legibility. Centuries of ploughing and weathering have flattened it to almost nothing, so that what survives is little more than a gentle swelling in the ground and a low, wide bank stretching for roughly thirteen metres along the north-eastern arc. That bank averages just thirty centimetres in height, barely ankle-high at its tallest point.
A rath, to use the Irish term, was a univallate enclosure, meaning it had a single surrounding bank and ditch, typically enclosing a farmstead or the residence of a person of moderate local standing during the early medieval period. Thousands of them once punctuated the Irish countryside; many have vanished entirely, absorbed into agricultural land over generations. The Dromin example, recorded in the North Kerry Archaeological Survey compiled by C. Toal and published in 1995, retains an internal diameter of roughly twenty-five metres north to south and twenty-three metres east to west, dimensions which suggest a reasonably sized enclosure in its original form. Its position on fairly elevated ground was almost certainly deliberate. A commanding view in all directions would have served practical purposes for whoever lived within it, whether for watching over livestock, monitoring approaching visitors, or simply asserting a visible presence on the landscape.