Ringfort (Rath), Banshagh, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Banshagh, Co. Kerry

A working farm in County Kerry has quietly swallowed most of an early medieval ringfort, leaving just enough of the earthen bank visible to suggest something older is lurking beneath the corrugated iron and cow sheds.

Ringforts, also known as raths, were enclosed farmsteads typically built between the sixth and tenth centuries, defined by one or more circular earthen banks and, often, an outer ditch or fosse. Here in Banshagh, the bank survives in fragments around the perimeter, roughly 29 metres across, with mature trees growing along its curve and farm buildings occupying or cutting through several sections. A shed has been built directly into the bank along the south-south-west arc, another structure sits on the line of the bank to the east, and additional farm buildings press against the southern arc from the outside. The interior, which might once have enclosed a cluster of timber dwellings, is now occupied by a cow shed and accumulated farm refuse.

The site is probably the same enclosure recorded in the 1840s as Fort David, noted at that time as lying on the western boundary of the townland of Dromin near Killorglin. By the time the Ordnance Survey revisited the area for its 1895 six-inch map, a fosse, the outer ditch that would originally have reinforced the bank's defensive profile, was indicated running from the south to the north-west of the monument. No trace of that fosse is visible on the ground today, suggesting it had already been levelled or absorbed into the surrounding pasture well before the twentieth century. What remains is a ringfort in the condition that describes many of its counterparts across Ireland: partially legible, continuously used, and gradually disappearing into the agricultural landscape that has always surrounded it.

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