Liscarrantrumpa, Lecarhoo, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ringforts

Liscarrantrumpa, Lecarhoo, Co. Kerry

On a north-west-facing slope in the townland of Lecarhoo, a large circular earthwork sits quietly in pasture, its shape still readable in the land despite centuries of agricultural use wearing down its edges.

This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval enclosure in Ireland, typically constructed between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries as a defended farmstead for a single family or small community. The enclosing bank here measures around 38 metres across its north-east to south-west axis, making it a substantial example of the type.

The earthen bank survives well on its northern and western arcs, standing around 1.6 metres above the exterior ground level and 1.1 metres above the interior, with a width of over eight metres. On the western to northern stretch, however, where the ground falls away gently from the interior toward the surrounding field, the bank has been levelled, either through deliberate clearance or gradual erosion over time. Beyond the bank, an external fosse, a shallow defensive ditch roughly 2.4 metres wide and 0.6 metres deep, traces the south-western to western perimeter, though it is now concealed beneath overgrowth. The interior itself slopes downward toward the north-north-west, and in its north-western quadrant there is a small circular depression, around two metres in diameter and 0.4 metres deep, whose original purpose is not recorded but which may mark the site of a structure or storage feature. One of the more telling details is that field boundaries radiate outward from the northern, south-south-western, and western sides of the rath, suggesting that later agricultural organisation of the surrounding land took the enclosure as a fixed point of reference, building the landscape of fields around it rather than simply absorbing or erasing it.

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