Ringfort (Rath), Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

On a west-facing slope above a Kerry river valley, there is a ringfort that has effectively vanished.

The earthworks are no longer visible at ground level, yet the site remains on the archaeological record, a presence defined almost entirely by absence. Raths, the circular earthen enclosures built during the early medieval period roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, were once among the most common settlement features of the Irish countryside, used as defended farmsteads by farming families of modest rank. That one should sit undetected in open pasture, on an elevated position that would once have commanded a clear view westward, makes it an oddly compelling kind of place.

The site was noted by B. Ó Cíobháin, who recorded both a rath and a souterrain at the location. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage, typically associated with early medieval settlements and thought to have served for storage or as a place of refuge. That feature too is presumed to lie beneath the grass. The site is likely one of three raths recorded across Drombohilly Lower and Upper in the 1930s by Captain D. B. O'Connell of the Kerry Archaeological Society, suggesting that this part of south-west Kerry was once a cluster of early medieval farmsteads, their boundaries and banks long since levelled by centuries of agriculture and weather.

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