Ringfort (Rath), An Baile Riabhach, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
What remains of this early medieval enclosure on the lower slopes of Lateevemore is less a monument than a set of clues pressed into the landscape.
The enclosing bank of the rath, a type of circular earthwork farmstead typical of early medieval Ireland, has largely been removed over the centuries, yet the circle it once described has not entirely disappeared. To the west, a townland boundary wall curves in a way that almost certainly follows the original bank's line; to the east, a gentle scarp persists in the ground, with the interior of the site sitting slightly raised above the surrounding pastureland. The enclosure survives, in other words, not as an obvious ruin but as a quiet persistence of shape.
The site sits in fairly wet pastureland and measures roughly 18 to 22 metres in internal diameter. Two short sections of the original earthen bank survive within the later stone boundary wall. The better preserved of the two stands 1.65 metres high on the inside and 2.25 metres on the outside, is between 1.5 and 2 metres wide, and runs for approximately 3.6 metres. The second section is considerably more modest, only half a metre high and partly buried beneath the later stonework built over it. At the south-west, a blocked entrance in the wall may mark where the original gateway once stood, the point through which an early Irish farming household would have passed daily. The site was recorded as part of J. Cuppage's archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region of the Dingle Peninsula, published in 1986, a survey that documented the remarkable density of prehistoric and early medieval remains across that part of Kerry.