Ringfort (Rath), An Rinn Iarthach, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
On the southern side of Hog's Head in County Kerry, there is a monument that exists now only on paper.
A circular enclosure, recorded on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map and named "Caher" on the OS Fair Plan, once occupied a stretch of rough pasture in this remote corner of the Iveragh Peninsula. Today, no surface trace of it survives. The land has closed over it entirely.
The name "Caher" is significant. It derives from the Irish "cathair", referring to a stone-built ringfort, a type of enclosed settlement common throughout early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. Ringforts, whether constructed from earth and timber or from dry-stone walling, served as farmsteads and homesteads for families of varying social rank. The "Caher" designation on the Fair Plan suggests this was understood, at the time of mapping, to be a stone enclosure rather than a simple earthen rath. That the OS surveyors recorded it at all, and gave it a name, implies it was legible in the landscape at the time of the first edition survey, sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. What happened between that moment and now, whether agricultural improvement, stone robbing, or simple erosion, is not recorded.