House - indeterminate date, Kilconly, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
House
Inside a ringfort at Kilconly in north County Kerry, two low humps of stone sit quietly in the earth, their precise age unknown.
They are easy to miss, roughly rectangular swellings measuring around five metres by six, arranged in the northern part of the enclosure's interior. What makes them worth a second look is what they might represent: the compressed, grass-covered footprints of houses where people once actually lived.
The enclosure itself is a univallate ringfort, meaning it has a single encircling bank rather than the multiple concentric earthworks found at more elaborate sites. Ringforts of this type are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, typically associated with early medieval farming settlements, though dating any individual example without excavation is difficult. The bank here is described as well-defined, and a gap of around six metres opens in it to the south-east, most likely the original entrance. Within that enclosed space, the two stone linear rises in the northern sector are tentatively identified as the remains of house sites. The qualification matters: without excavation, they could reflect other activity, or natural disturbance, or something else entirely. That uncertainty is part of what makes the place interesting. The survey of north Kerry conducted by C. Toal, published in 1995, recorded the site and gave it entry number 141 in that catalogue.