Ringfort (Rath), An Bóthar Buí, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), An Bóthar Buí, Co. Kerry

Beneath a laneway on the Dingle Peninsula, sealed under ordinary ground, sit two small stone chambers shaped like beehives, connected by a low passage.

Neither is tall enough to stand in. They were uncovered when the lane was being widened, noted, and then covered over again, returning to obscurity as quietly as they had emerged. This is the souterrain associated with the oval rath at An Bóthar Buí, a structure that sits at the junction of four fields on a gentle north-facing slope and has been folded so thoroughly into the landscape that the laneway itself now skirts around the eastern half of the enclosure.

A rath is an early medieval farmstead enclosure, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and used for both settlement and the protection of livestock. This one is oval rather than the more common circular form, measuring roughly 45 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west. Its inner bank rises to about 1.2 metres on the inside and 2 metres on the outside, a modest but deliberate defensive profile. In the north-west quadrant there is a second outer bank, sitting about 5 metres beyond the inner one, built from earth with a facing of drystone walling; it may be a later addition rather than original to the design. A blocked gap in the southern section of the inner bank is thought to be the original entrance, though the site is now entered through gaps at the north-east and south-west. The souterrain, an underground stone-built structure typically associated with storage or refuge, was found outside the inner bank to the south during road works and subsequently reburied. Its two beehive-shaped chambers, joined by a passage, were described in J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne peninsula.

The laneway that edges the eastern side of the enclosure is part of what makes this site quietly legible to a careful eye. The earthworks are visible from the road, and the relationship between the old boundary and the modern lane, one accommodating the other across perhaps a thousand years, is the kind of thing that rewards a slow look rather than a passing glance.

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