Ringfort (Rath), Park, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Park, Co. Kerry

There is a ringfort in Park, County Kerry, that you cannot see.

Standing on the pasture at the top of a south-west-facing slope, there is nothing at ground level to suggest that anything lies beneath the grass. The site qualifies as a possible rath, the term for an earthen ringfort of the kind built across Ireland during the early medieval period, typically as a farmstead enclosure, and its existence is inferred rather than confirmed by direct observation.

What points to its presence is a dashed curving line on a 1939 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, running roughly south-south-west to north-east and abutting a linear field boundary on the south-east. That boundary alignment may itself preserve the arc of the original enclosure, which is estimated at around 35 metres in diameter. Close by, approximately 8 metres to the south-south-west, lies a souterrain, a type of underground stone-lined passage associated with early medieval settlement, used variously for storage, refuge, or as a place of concealment. The presence of a souterrain nearby lends some weight to the idea that a rath once occupied this ground, since the two features frequently occur together at sites of this period.

For a visitor, there is little to observe at the surface, and that is precisely what makes the site worth thinking about. The 1939 map, with its tentative dashed line running across what is now ordinary farmland, is in some respects the more legible version of the site than the ground itself.

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Pete F
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