Ringfort (Rath), Dromdoohig Beg, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
In the pasture and marsh of Dromdoohig Beg, a ringfort exists that cannot actually be seen.
No earthwork rises from the ground, no bank catches the eye, and nothing marks the spot for a visitor scanning the landscape. The site is classified as a possible rath, the term used for an early medieval farmstead enclosure, typically defined by a circular earthen bank and ditch, that served as both a domestic settlement and a means of enclosing livestock. Here, that enclosure has sunk entirely below the surface, its presence preserved only in the documentary record.
What we know of its shape and dimensions comes from the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1846, which recorded a circular enclosure roughly thirty metres in diameter. More intriguing still, the map shows field boundaries radiating outward from the bank at three points, to the northeast, south-southeast, and northwest. This pattern, field walls extending from a ringfort's outer edge, is not uncommon in the Irish landscape, where early medieval land divisions sometimes fossilised into the agricultural boundaries of later centuries. The site lies on level ground about two hundred metres east of a tributary of the Glanooragh River, in an area that is partly marsh, which may help explain why the earthwork itself has not survived.
