Ringfort (Rath), Knockreagh, Co. Kerry

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Ringfort (Rath), Knockreagh, Co. Kerry

At Knockreagh in County Kerry, a small circular earthwork sits in the landscape with no clearly identifiable entrance.

This is a univallate rath, meaning a ringfort enclosed by a single bank and ditch, a type of enclosure associated with early medieval farming settlement in Ireland. Most people living within a few miles of one will never have paid it much attention, and this particular example has the added peculiarity of having slipped off the cartographic record entirely between one Ordnance Survey edition and the next, only to reappear on aerial photographs taken by the Geological Survey of Ireland in 1974.

The rath measures roughly 16 to 17 metres across internally, enclosed by an earthen bank some 4.5 metres wide. That bank rises between 0.6 and 0.9 metres above the interior and between 1 and 1.4 metres above the surrounding ground, making it a modest but still legible presence in the field. The interior itself sits at a slightly elevated level relative to the land outside, and in the northern sector there is a faint internal mound that may indicate a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber typically used in early medieval Ireland for storage or refuge. The enclosing bank shows numerous cattle breaks, gaps worn through by livestock over generations, which is why no definite original entrance can now be identified. The site was first recorded on the 1841 to 1842 Ordnance Survey map and was surveyed in detail for the North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995 by C. Toal.

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