Mound, Rathmorrel, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Rathmorrel, Co. Kerry

In a field in Rathmorrel, north County Kerry, a track cuts straight through what was once a circular enclosure, bisecting something that was old long before anyone thought to record it.

The enclosure was already significant enough to appear on the Ordnance Survey maps of 1842 and again in 1916, but in the intervening generations the ground has been considerably levelled, and the track running north to south now divides whatever survives.

What remains is modest but specific. In the southern sector of the enclosure there is a clump of stones, and roughly two metres to the south-west of that sits an oblong mound, approximately six metres long and two and a half metres wide, curving as it meets the enclosing bank. No entrance to the enclosure has been identified. Circular enclosures of this kind in the Irish landscape are often associated with ringforts, the most common monument type in rural Ireland, typically dating from the early medieval period and used as farmsteads or places of settlement. Whether that is the function here is not confirmed, and the relationship between the oblong mound and the enclosure bank adds an element that does not resolve neatly into a standard type. The site was documented by Caroline Toal in the North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, which remains a key reference for this stretch of the county.

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Pete F
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