Ringfort (Rath), Lisheennashingane, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
Beneath the pasture at Lisheennashingane, a natural spring rises and flows south through the interior of an ancient earthen enclosure.
That detail alone sets this ringfort apart. Most raths, the circular or oval earthen enclosures built across Ireland during the early medieval period as farmsteads and defended homesteads, were chosen for their elevated, dry ground. Finding one with a spring running through it is quietly anomalous, and it raises questions about whether the water was always there, whether it influenced the choice of site, and what practical or ritual significance it may have carried for the people who lived within the bank.
The enclosure is oval in plan, measuring roughly 40 metres north to south and 33 metres east to west, and sits on a gentle south-west-facing slope with its interior ground dropping away in that same direction. The earthen bank that defines it is severely eroded on the northern and southern sides, standing only about half a metre above the interior surface, though it rises to 1.2 metres on the exterior. On the southern side, the bank has been absorbed into a field boundary, which is a common fate for ringfort walls across the Irish countryside, where later agricultural arrangements quietly consumed earlier ones. There are two gaps in the bank, one at the north-north-east about three metres wide and another at the south measuring two and a half metres, either of which may represent an original entrance. A scattering of trees lines the interior edge. When the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map was drawn in 1846, the enclosure was recorded as circular with a diameter of approximately 50 metres, sitting at the junction of four fields, which suggests the surrounding landscape had already been reorganised around it rather than through it, a small concession to whatever lingering significance the place still held in local memory.