Earthwork, Farranfore, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ritual/Ceremonial
Just east of the Farranfore railway junction, in what is now ordinary level pasture, a low circular earthwork sits largely unnoticed in the Kerry countryside.
It measures roughly nineteen metres across its widest axis and is defined not by a wall or ditch in the conventional sense but by a scarp, a change in ground level, rising to about 0.7 metres. That modest elevation is enough to mark out a roughly circular enclosure of around eighteen metres on the perpendicular axis, the kind of dimensions consistent with a small ringfort or enclosure of early medieval origin, though no specific date or function has been assigned to this particular example.
A field boundary and drain cut across the western sector, the ordinary business of agricultural improvement over the centuries having sliced through whatever integrity the earthwork once held on that side. Dense vegetation further complicates the picture, making the full perimeter difficult to trace on the ground. It is the kind of site that survives not through any special protection but simply because the land around it has stayed in pasture, and because a low grassy scarp does not especially inconvenience a grazing animal or a tractor working the adjacent fields.
