Ringfort (Rath), Banna, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Banna, Co. Kerry

In the fields near Banna in north Kerry, a large ringfort once occupied the landscape with enough presence to earn the name Lisanudair, or Lios an fhuadair, meaning "ringfort of the bustle.

" That name implies activity, occupation, perhaps even noise, yet the site today offers almost nothing visible to confirm it. The earthwork has been levelled, and only faint undulations in the grass hint that anything was ever there at all.

A rath is an earthen ringfort, typically a circular enclosure defined by one or more banks and ditches, used as a farmstead or settlement during the early medieval period in Ireland. This one appears to have been multivallate, meaning it had multiple concentric banks and ditches, a form generally associated with higher-status occupation. Its outline was clear enough to be recorded on the Ordnance Survey maps of both 1842 and 1897, suggesting it was still a recognisable feature of the landscape well into the nineteenth century. At some point between then and now, agricultural activity removed it. C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, catalogued it as site no. 671, and noted even at that stage that only slight undulations remained.

What survives is less a monument than an absence. The Irish name carries more weight now than the ground does, preserving in language what the land itself no longer shows.

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Pete F
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