Ringfort (Rath), Clashnagarrane, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Clashnagarrane, Co. Kerry

On a west-facing slope in Clashnagarrane, County Kerry, a circular earthwork sits quietly in pasture beside a small stream, its outline still legible after well over a thousand years.

This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval ringfort in Ireland, a form of enclosed farmstead built roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. An earthen bank, some three and a half metres wide, traces the eastern and southern arc of the enclosure, while a scarp, a cut or shaped slope in the ground rather than a built-up bank, defines the south-eastern edge. The whole circle measures just over thirty-one metres across, which is fairly typical for a single-family farmstead of its era.

What gives the site a degree of added interest is the physical detail that survives. On the interior face of the bank, along the south-eastern arc, there is evidence of possible stone facing, suggesting that whoever built or maintained the enclosure at some point reinforced the earthwork with stonework, a refinement seen on some raths where the builder had access to good local material. A narrow gap of around two metres in the south-east is interpreted as the likely original entrance, orientated, as many ringfort entrances were, away from the prevailing weather. The interior slopes gently southward and sits slightly higher than the surrounding ground, and at its centre there are traces of what may be a hut site, the kind of sunken or defined floor area that would once have sheltered the occupants. Mature coniferous trees now grow inside the enclosure, and loose stones have been dumped onto the scarp and into the northern and north-western portions of the interior, the ordinary accumulation of agricultural tidying over generations.

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Pete F
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