Ringfort (Rath), Lissaniska, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
A ringfort that exists only on paper is, in its own way, more thought-provoking than one you can walk around.
The site in Lissaniska, County Kerry, known as Lisnabro or Lios na Bró, translates from the Irish as "fort of the quern", a quern being the hand-operated rotary stone used for grinding grain, suggesting some domestic or agricultural association now entirely beyond recovery. It was recorded as a circular enclosure on Ordnance Survey maps made in 1841 to 1842, and again on maps from 1939, yet today no surface trace of the site remains visible.
Ringforts, which are roughly circular enclosures defined by earthen banks or stone walls, were built mainly during the early medieval period in Ireland, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and served as enclosed farmsteads for individual families or small communities. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, but many others have been lost to agriculture, development, and the slow work of erosion. The fact that Lisnabro appeared on two separate rounds of Ordnance Survey mapping, nearly a century apart, suggests it was at least partially legible in the landscape as late as the mid-twentieth century. Whatever remained at that point has since disappeared entirely, leaving the placename and the cartographic record as the only evidence that anything was ever there.