Ringfort (Rath), Arda Mór, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Arda Mór, Co. Kerry

At Arda Mór on the Dingle Peninsula, a circular earthwork sits quietly in the landscape with an interior feature that nobody has yet explained.

The enclosing bank of this ringfort, a rath being the Irish term for a roughly circular earthen enclosure typically associated with early medieval farmsteads, is well preserved and measures around 1.25 metres high on the inside and 1.5 metres on the outside. What is unusual here is that its outer face is partly reinforced with drystone masonry, a detail that sets it apart from the more straightforwardly earthen examples found across Kerry. Three narrow gaps break through the bank in the east-south-east sector, suggesting a deliberate arrangement of entrances rather than later damage or collapse.

The interior of the rath, roughly 21.5 metres across, holds one visible feature: an oval depression measuring approximately 9 metres east to west and 5.4 metres north to south. No one has established what caused it. It could represent the collapsed remains of a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage common on early medieval sites and often used for storage or refuge, or it might indicate a sunken structure of some kind. The published archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, compiled by J. Cuppage in 1986, recorded it without offering an interpretation, and that uncertainty has not been resolved since. The rath sits about 75 metres east of another recorded monument nearby, suggesting this part of the peninsula was once considerably more settled than it might appear today.

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Pete F
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