Ringfort (Cashel), Kilmore, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Kilmore, Co. Kerry

At Kilmore in north Kerry, a large grass-covered stone enclosure sits quietly in the landscape, its interior raised slightly above the surrounding ground as if the whole structure has been holding its breath for centuries.

This is a cashel, sometimes called a cahir, a type of ringfort built from stone rather than earth and bank, and this particular example is univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing wall rather than the concentric rings that mark more elaborate sites. The bank itself is substantial, averaging six metres wide, rising a metre above the interior floor and over two metres above the external fosse, the shallow ditch that traces the outer edge of the whole enclosure. That fosse is only around three metres wide and thirty centimetres deep now, but it remains visible, a faint crease in the ground that marks the full boundary of what was once a defended farmstead.

The interior is where things become genuinely interesting. The floor sits higher than the land outside, and scattered across it are several distinct mounds whose origins have not been fully resolved. One possibility is that they represent the collapsed remains of house sites; another is that some are souterrains, the dry-stone underground passages or chambers built during the early medieval period, most likely for storage or as places of refuge. The largest mound in the western sector measures ten metres north to south, and a nearby mound rises to around four metres in height, which is considerable for a feature of this kind. In the south-east, a semi-circular bank curves inward to meet the main enclosing wall, a detail that might indicate an internal subdivision or a secondary structural phase. These features were documented as part of C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, which remains one of the more thorough regional surveys carried out in Munster during that period.

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