Ringfort (Rath), An Loch, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), An Loch, Co. Kerry

On the eastern edge of Dingle Harbour, a ringfort sits quietly dismembered.

Farmers at some point drove field walls straight through it, slicing the enclosure into three portions, and the bank that once defined its perimeter has worn so low as to be barely readable in the landscape. What remains is a roughly circular footprint, about thirty metres across at its widest external measurement, belonging to a class of early medieval enclosure, the univallate ringfort or rath, that once served as a defended farmstead for a single family or household. Thousands of them survive across Ireland in varying states of completeness; this one sits at the lower end of that scale.

A detail recorded from local information adds a layer of interest. A souterrain, an underground passage or chamber typically built from stone and used for storage or as a place of refuge, was apparently discovered in the vicinity, though the exact attribution is uncertain. It may belong to this fort or to either of two neighbouring ringforts recorded nearby. The ambiguity is telling: the landscape around An Loch was clearly settled with some density during the early medieval period, and the boundaries between these sites have become blurred over centuries of agricultural use. The survey of the Dingle Peninsula carried out by J. Cuppage and published in 1986 under the title Corca Dhuibhne remains the principal record for sites like this one across the peninsula.

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