Ringfort (Cashel), Baile An Chnocáin, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
On the lower western slopes of Brandon Mountain in County Kerry, a roughly circular stone enclosure some 29 metres across contains the layered remains of at least seven stone huts, a blocked souterrain, and centuries of repairs that have left the site as much a record of continuous human use as of any single period.
This is a cashel, a type of drystone ringfort, and what makes this one quietly arresting is how legibly its history has been written into the stonework itself. The enclosing wall, 1.8 metres wide and standing up to 2.8 metres high in places, has been rebuilt so often that the later masonry is generally distinguishable from the earlier courses beneath it. The original south-western entrance, just 1.3 metres wide and flanked by upright slabs, is now blocked by later walling, while three other entrances to the north, east, and south were added at some point after the initial construction.
The interior is no less complex. A dividing wall runs from north-north-west to south-east across the enclosure; its central section is formed by the surviving walls of the huts themselves, while the portions abutting the cashel wall are relatively recent additions. The best-preserved hut, measuring roughly 4.8 by 4.4 metres internally, retains a lintelled entrance on its western side and several small wall-cupboards, niches built directly into the stonework at low level, that would once have served as storage. Just south of that entrance, a lintelled recess marks the former entry to a souterrain, an underground passage typically used for storage or refuge, though this one is no longer accessible. The remaining huts survive to varying degrees; some are reduced to a single wall, others partly obscured by field-clearance stone heaped against them from outside. Pairs of huts are conjoined, sharing walls and connecting passages, suggesting the settlement grew incrementally rather than being planned all at once. J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula first documented the site in systematic detail, cataloguing the sequence of rebuilding and modification that spans the original early medieval construction through to interventions that appear relatively recent.