Ringfort (Cashel), Liss, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Liss, Co. Kerry

Beneath the overgrown interior of this stone enclosure on the Iveragh Peninsula, a souterrain may be hiding.

Local tradition holds that one runs beneath the site, but nobody has pinned down exactly where. That uncertainty is oddly fitting for a place that raises more questions than it answers, including whether the two puzzling concentrations of loose stone inside its walls are the remnants of ancient structures or simply the accumulated debris of centuries of agricultural tidying.

The site is a caher, the Irish term for a ringfort built of stone rather than earth and timber, and this one sits in sloping pasture above Kenmare Bay. Its enclosing wall averages 2.3 metres in width, constructed with a rubble core and dressed on both faces with drystone masonry, the familiar technique of fitting stones together without mortar. The overall footprint is modest, roughly 18.5 metres across from north to south and 17.8 metres east to west, which is broadly typical of the small farmsteads these structures once represented. Ringforts of this kind were built and occupied primarily during the early medieval period, between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, serving as the enclosed homesteads of farming families across Ireland. This particular example has not worn the centuries lightly. The wall is poorly preserved, and sections of the internal facing show signs of having been rebuilt at some point in more recent times, complicating any straightforward reading of what is original and what is repair.

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