Ringfort (Rath), Rathmorrel, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Rathmorrel, Co. Kerry

A ringfort, or rath, is one of the most common archaeological features in the Irish countryside, a circular enclosure typically built during the early medieval period to serve as a farmstead or small defended settlement.

The one at Rathmorrel in north Kerry is, by those standards, a quietly puzzling example. Much of it has been levelled, and a track running north to south cuts directly through what would once have been a continuous circuit. What remains is largely a semi-circular raised area, rising only about 0.8 metres above the surrounding ground, giving the impression of something half-remembered rather than fully preserved.

What makes the site worth attention is not what is missing but what survives within its interior. In the northern sector, two depressions sit alongside a small mound measuring 2.4 metres by 3 metres, and from one of the depressions a narrow ridge extends south-westward for 9 metres, its purpose unrecorded. To the south, a clump of stones lies close to an oblong mound, 6 metres by 2.6 metres, which curves into the bank itself. A slight trace of an exterior fosse, the shallow ditch that would have reinforced the enclosure's boundary, is still discernible to the north and north-west, running 12 metres in length, 2.4 metres wide and 0.4 metres deep. The site's internal diameter, measured north to south, is 30.6 metres. No original entrance has been identified. The circular enclosure appears on both the 1842 and 1916 Ordnance Survey maps, confirming it was a recognisable feature of the landscape well into the modern era, even as agricultural activity gradually wore it down. Its details were recorded as part of C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995.

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