Ringfort (Rath), Baile An Gharráin, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
On the southern slopes of Knockmoylemore, overlooking the lower valley of the Garfinny river, a roughly oval enclosure sits quietly in the Kerry landscape with more questions inside it than answers.
The rath, a univallate ringfort, meaning one enclosed by a single earthen bank and accompanying ditch, measures roughly 34 metres north to south and 37 metres east to west. That much is straightforward enough. What makes this particular site more interesting is what occupies the interior, a series of features that do not resolve neatly into any single period or purpose, and which suggest the place was used, altered, and reused over a long stretch of time.
The enclosing bank survives to about 1.7 metres at its best-preserved points, and the fosse, the external ditch that would originally have reinforced the bank's defensive or territorial function, remains up to a metre deep and 4.4 metres wide, though it fades to almost nothing around the southern half. Later drystone walling was added along the northern and eastern sections, and the western stretch of the original bank was absorbed into the boundary between townlands, which gives some sense of how continuously the land here has been negotiated and divided. Inside, a stony natural or constructed ledge bisects the enclosure from west-southwest to east-northeast, leaving the northern sector raised roughly half a metre above the southern. Tucked against the bank at the west-southwest is a clochaun, a small, circular drystone hut, nearly five metres across internally, with walls about a metre thick. Such structures are associated with early medieval and later occupation across the west of Ireland, often serving as simple shelters or storage. This one is now considerably defaced. Stranger still is a triangular arrangement of two rows of low upright stones in the southern sector, the purpose of which remains unidentified, along with a partly stone-lined hollow cut into the top of the bank just west of the hut, measuring roughly 2.5 metres by 1.5 metres and a metre deep, the function of which is equally unclear. The site was documented in detail by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, which noted plainly that some of the internal features are likely secondary additions to the original structure.
The accumulation of unresolved features is what gives the site its particular character. A ringfort used, then modified, then partially dismantled into a field boundary, with a hut of uncertain date and stone arrangements of unknown purpose, is not unusual in the west of Ireland, but this one wears its ambiguity with unusual clarity. Each element visible at the surface represents a decision someone made, at some point, for reasons that have not come down to us.