Ringfort (Rath), Baile Mór Thiar, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
On a south-facing slope above Ventry Harbour on the Dingle Peninsula, a circular earthen enclosure sits quietly in the landscape, its banks still holding their shape after many centuries.
This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland, typically a farmstead surrounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches, built to define territory, provide security for livestock, and mark the status of the family within. What makes this particular example worth pausing over is the way its original form can still be read in the ground, even as nature and later land use have worked steadily to reclaim it.
The enclosure has an internal diameter of 28 metres, and its earthen bank survives to a maximum height of 2.2 metres. At least part of that bank was originally faced with drystone walling, though vegetation now conceals most of it. The fosse, a defensive ditch running outside the bank, was once a complete circuit but now survives only around the south-eastern half of the site; it measures 4.75 metres wide and roughly 2.2 metres deep. A second outer stone-faced wall, which appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map as encircling the whole enclosure, also survives only on the south-eastern arc, and may represent a later addition connected to the modern field boundary system rather than part of the original design. Two entrance gaps break the bank, one at the west and one at the south-east; the western opening has been widened in recent times to 3.5 metres, while the south-eastern one retains a slight causeway crossing the fosse. Inside, the remains of stone structures are visible but too ruined and overgrown to interpret with any confidence. One feature in the north-east sector appears to be D-shaped or rectangular, roughly 3 metres long, with a wall surviving to less than a metre in height. The survey by J. Cuppage, published in 1986 as part of the Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, recorded these details, and they remain the clearest account of what the site contains.