Ringfort (Rath), Toanreagh, Co. Kerry

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Ringfort (Rath), Toanreagh, Co. Kerry

What catches the attention at this rath in Toanreagh is not the earthwork itself but what sits inside it.

Most ringforts, the circular enclosed farmsteads that dot the Irish countryside in their thousands, present an interior that is essentially open ground. This one contains two distinct mounds, and the suspicion is that they mark something underground rather than above it.

The fort is a univallate rath, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the multiple concentric rings that signalled higher status. Around the bank runs an exterior fosse, a defensive ditch, that is U-shaped in profile, averaging 1.6 metres wide and 1.1 metres deep, and still well defined. The interior sits at a higher level than the surrounding land, and a wide entrance gap of 8 metres opens to the south. Inside, the two mounds measure roughly 10.4 by 10 metres and 4 by 6 metres respectively. The 1842 Ordnance Survey map labels the site as containing a feature it calls a "cave", and C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, cautiously suggests the mounds may be the collapsed or overgrown remains of a souterrain associated with that marking. Souterrains are stone-lined underground passages, typically constructed during the early medieval period, that were used for storage and occasionally as refuges. The site sits on a rise, one field south-east of a neighbouring ringfort, and commands a wide view of the surrounding countryside, a characteristic shared by many raths whose occupants had practical reasons for choosing elevated ground.

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