Promontory fort - coastal, An Mhuiríoch, Co. Kerry

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Promontory fort – coastal, An Mhuiríoch, Co. Kerry

On a low-lying headland near An Mhuiríoch on the Dingle Peninsula, the evidence for an ancient defended enclosure amounts to little more than a faint swell in the ground.

A barely perceptible bank and its accompanying fosse, the shallow ditch that would once have reinforced it, cross the neck of the headland where defenders might once have held a line. A modern field bank has been built directly on top of the earlier one, obscuring whatever profile it once had, and erosion has further softened what little remained. Two small grassy islets lie just offshore, reachable only at low tide, and their position suggests the headland itself was once considerably larger, the sea having claimed its outer edges over the intervening centuries.

A promontory fort is one of the simpler forms of prehistoric or early medieval coastal defence: a naturally defended spit or headland is made more secure by throwing up a bank and ditch across the narrow landward approach, turning the sea into three walls for free. This headland fits that template in outline, though the remains are so slight that it sits in the category of possible rather than confirmed examples. When surveyed in 2002 by Casey, the site was noted as one of several nearby headlands with the right topography for defence, yet the only one showing any traces at all of earthworks. A disused roadway still runs along the cliff edge, and the surrounding landscape is gentle, fertile pasture divided by drystone walls. There is a suggestion, tentative but intriguing, that this headland may have given its name to Doneen Pier nearby, hinting at a longer memory attached to the place even as the physical traces have all but vanished.

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