Ringfort (Rath), Ballykissane, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballykissane, Co. Kerry

Between the first Ordnance Survey map and the second, this Kerry ringfort quietly lost much of itself.

By 1894, the southern and eastern banks of this rath near the Laune river estuary had been levelled, probably cleared to make more usable pastureland, and what had once been a neatly circular enclosure was reduced to a partial outline. That kind of incremental erasure is common enough across Ireland, but what makes this site worth a second look is what survives in the disturbed ground of its south-eastern interior: the ruined remains of a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber built from drystone walling, once roofed with flat stone lintels and used in early medieval times for storage or refuge.

The rath itself measures roughly 23 metres across its internal diameter and belongs to the univallate type, meaning it was originally defined by a single enclosing bank rather than the multiple concentric rings found at more elaborate sites. That bank still stands to about 1.3 metres in places and runs to around 2.4 metres wide, though its crest has settled to nearly the same level as the overgrown interior, giving the whole thing a sunken, compressed appearance. The souterrain, meanwhile, is now visible only as a robber's trench running roughly north to south, up to 3 metres deep and nearly 6 metres wide, with short sections of drystone walling and several displaced lintels lying where they fell after the structure was plundered, likely for its stone. A band of loose earth and rubble is all that marks the circuit of the bank where the levelling occurred to the south and east.

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