Ringfort (Cashel), An Lóthar, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), An Lóthar, Co. Kerry

At the southern tip of the Iveragh Peninsula, a ruined stone enclosure sits in the townland of An Lóthar with a westward view across Ballinskelligs Bay, its walls now so thoroughly reclaimed by vegetation and collapse that only a patient eye can read what it once was.

This is a caher, the Irish term for a stone-walled ringfort, and while hundreds survive across Kerry in varying states of repair, this particular example has been almost entirely swallowed by the landscape around it.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring just over twenty metres across in both directions. Its wall was built using drystone masonry, stone laid without mortar and carefully faced on both the inner and outer surfaces, a construction method that required considerable skill and organisation. The outer face, built from large boulders, can still be traced intermittently around the full circuit, though it is pressed on all sides by collapsed stonework. At the south-western arc the wall survives to three courses in height, which is the best-preserved stretch. The eastern section has fared worst; a later field boundary runs directly over it, a common fate for ancient enclosures in landscapes that have been farmed continuously for centuries. The interior is overgrown and difficult to read, though four upright slabs mark the corners of a south-facing entrance feature about a metre wide, and further upright stones are scattered inside without forming any recognisable structure. The survey compiled by Aidan O'Sullivan and John Sheehan for their 1996 archaeological study of the Iveragh Peninsula recorded these details, noting that the inner wall facing remains largely hidden beneath dense overgrowth.

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