Ringfort (Rath), Cloonnafinneela, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
In the pastureland of Cloonnafinneela, a later farmer has driven a field boundary straight through the middle of a monument that was already old when medieval Ireland was young.
The earthen bank of this Kerry ringfort, roughly forty metres across, has been bisected on a NW-SE axis, with about two thirds of the structure pushed to the east side of the division. A ringfort, or rath, is an enclosed circular settlement typically dating from the early medieval period, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches; this one retains its external fosse, the surrounding ditch, alongside traces of what may have been a counterscarp bank, a low outer ridge on the far edge of the ditch that would have added a further line of defence or demarcation. Gaps in the bank on the east, south, and north sides may represent original entranceways, though centuries of agricultural activity make that difficult to read with certainty.
What makes the site particularly interesting is a detail recorded near the WNW edge of the fosse: patches of black earth and heat-shattered stone. This combination is associated with a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or industrial site found widely across Ireland, typically consisting of a hearth, a trough, and a mound of fire-cracked stone produced by repeatedly heating rocks and plunging them into water. Their presence here, adjacent to the ringfort, raises the possibility that the area was in use long before the rath itself was constructed, or that the two features overlap in ways that are not yet fully understood. The SE arc of the bank and fosse is the best preserved section, offering the clearest sense of the monument's original scale and form, though heavy vegetation across much of the interior limits what the eye can take in from ground level.