Ringfort (Rath), Carrigeencullia, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
Beneath the scrub and encroaching bushes at Carrigeencullia, a circular earthwork sits quietly in pasture, oriented so that anyone standing inside it looks out across a south-easterly slope towards the twin rounded hills known as The Paps of Dana.
That alignment, whether deliberate or incidental, gives this modest rath an unsettling quality. The Paps are among the most mythologically charged landmarks in Munster, long associated with the goddess Anu, and the ringfort's position on the slope means those hills dominate the view from within the enclosure.
A rath is an Early Medieval farmstead enclosure, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century, in which a family and their livestock would have sheltered within a raised earthen bank. This one is comparatively small, with an internal diameter of eighteen metres, its defining bank of earth and stone measuring around 3.4 metres wide and standing a metre high on both faces. The bank is topped intermittently with stone and has accumulated rubble against both its inner and outer faces on the south-western side, suggesting some degree of later disturbance or collapse. A gap of just over three metres in the north-eastern arc of the bank is the likely original entrance. More intriguing still is a possible souterrain recorded at the centre of the interior. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically associated with ringforts, and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. The presence of one here, if confirmed, would suggest this was a site of some domestic complexity rather than a simple enclosure.
The earthwork is largely obscured by trees and bushes, which means its shape is easier to read on the ground by walking the bank than by looking at it from a distance. The views to The Paps remain clear from the slope, and that south-easterly prospect is probably the most immediate thing a visitor notices once inside the overgrown interior.