Ringfort (Cashel), Teernahila, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Teernahila, Co. Kerry

Beneath this hilltop in Teernahila, if an observer named Ua Riain was correct when he visited in 1927, there are rooms.

He recorded that a narrow stone chamber built into the enclosing wall of this ancient cashel gave access to spaces running underground beneath the structure. Nobody has been able to confirm this since. The chamber is still there, partly collapsed at its eastern end, and three of its original roofing lintels remain in place, but whatever lay beyond them is now either gone or simply unreachable.

The site is a caher, the Irish term for a stone-walled ringfort, a type of enclosed settlement common across early medieval Ireland, typically used as a defended farmstead or the residence of a person of local standing. This one sits on a natural hillock overlooking the upper Ferta river valley, with Dingle Bay visible to the north. Its enclosing wall, now heavily overgrown with sod and considerably reduced, was a substantial piece of construction: roughly 4.5 metres thick on average, faced on both inner and outer sides with drystone masonry around a rubble core, with what appears to be double-facing at the north and south. At its best-preserved point, the northwest, it still stands 1.3 metres high externally. A gap of 3.4 metres on the east side is likely the original entrance. The internal diameter runs about 26 metres north to south and 29 metres east to west, making it a reasonably sizeable enclosure. The wall chamber at the south is a feature worth noting: such chambers, sometimes called mural cells, were built into the thickness of cashel walls and could serve various purposes, from storage to shelter. Ua Riain also noted a circular depression near the centre of the site, which is no longer visible, suggesting the interior has shifted considerably since his visit.

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