Ringfort (Rath), Ballinclemesig, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
In the townland of Ballinclemesig in north County Kerry, there is a ringfort that exists only on paper.
The Ordnance Survey's first-edition map, published in 1842, recorded it as a circular enclosure, the kind of earthwork typically associated with early medieval farming settlements, where a raised bank and ditch enclosed a homestead and offered some protection for livestock. By the time the later OS edition was produced, it had vanished from the cartographic record entirely, and today there is no surface trace to be found.
Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, with tens of thousands once scattered across the landscape. The fact that this one disappeared so completely between map editions suggests it was already degraded by the mid-nineteenth century, or that it fell victim to agricultural clearance during or after the upheavals of that period, when land was being consolidated, drained, and turned over with new urgency. C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, catalogued it as entry number 445, preserving at least its former location in the documentary record even as the physical monument itself had long since been absorbed back into the fields.