Ringfort (Rath), Ballycarbery, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballycarbery, Co. Kerry

On the northern bank of the tidal estuary of the Ferta river in south Kerry, a roughly subrectangular earthwork sits in level pastureland, its original circular form quietly dismantled over the centuries by the practical demands of farming.

What survives is a univallate rath, meaning a ringfort enclosed by a single bank and ditch, though here the ditch is largely gone and modern field boundaries have replaced two of the four sides. The bank itself retains a slate core, rising to a maximum height of 1.7 metres at the south-west corner, and the whole enclosure measures roughly 26 metres across its longer axis. It is the kind of site that could be walked past without a second glance, yet it contains, compressed within its modified outline, several centuries of early medieval occupation in miniature.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map recorded the site as a circular enclosure pressing against a field boundary to the west. By the time the second edition was produced in the 1890s, that western boundary had been removed and the rath had taken on its present subrectangular appearance, truncated to the east by another field division. Inside, in the north-western sector, two stone huts stand adjoining one another. The northern hut is circular in plan, measuring 5.8 metres in internal diameter, with some stone facing still visible and a possible entrance gap of 0.8 metres to the east. The southern hut is square, measuring 5 metres internally, with stone facing beneath sod-covered walls and a wider entrance of 1.4 metres facing east. The combination of circular and square hut forms within a single enclosure is an unusual domestic arrangement. More unusual still is the souterrain, a type of underground stone-built passage used in early medieval Ireland for storage or refuge, whose entrance opens in the outer face of the western bank. A passage appears to run northward from this point, but a collapsed lintel now blocks any further investigation.

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