Ringfort (Rath), Dooneen, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Dooneen, Co. Kerry

Sitting in level pasture just off the Dooneen-Knockatagglebeg road in County Kerry, this low earthen enclosure has been folded so thoroughly into the working landscape that a passing glance would likely mistake it for a slight rise in the field.

It is, in fact, a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead built throughout Ireland roughly between the early medieval period and the Viking Age. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation; this one survives in a particularly quiet, absorbed way, its bank now barely lifting above the surrounding pasture.

The enclosure measures approximately 32 metres north to south, defined by an earthen bank around 9 metres wide. What remains of that bank stands only about 0.4 metres above the concave interior and a mere 0.12 metres above the exterior ground surface, meaning the outer edge has been almost entirely absorbed into the field. A prostrate stone lies in the northern quadrant. The site appears on the 1846 Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a roughly circular enclosure of around 30 metres in diameter, which confirms that what is visible today aligns closely with what was already a reduced earthwork by the mid-nineteenth century. A field boundary roughly 1.6 metres high skirts the bank at the south-east, and the road boundary along the south-west arc touches the bank tangentially, suggesting that later field divisions and road alignments were drawn around the rath rather than through it, a subtle form of respect, or perhaps just practical accommodation, that has helped preserve even this much.

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Pete F
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