Ringfort (Rath), Corr Áille, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Corr Áille, Co. Kerry

On the north-facing slopes of Reenconnell, looking out over the waterlogged plain threaded by the Feohanagh river and its tributaries, a double-banked enclosure sits quietly in the landscape with its stone walls still largely intact.

What makes this rath, a type of enclosed farmstead built during the early medieval period in Ireland, worth attention is not its size but its degree of preservation and its layered internal complexity. Two concentric earthen banks, a fosse between them, an entrance gap defined by a single upright stone slab on one side and drystone walling on the other, and, inside, the ruins of at least one stone hut, possibly two. For a site of its kind, the detail is unusually legible.

The enclosure is bivallate, meaning it has two banks rather than the single bank more commonly seen, and the inner one is substantial: it rises around four metres above the base of the fosse and is revetted on its inner face with drystone walling preserved to an average height of 1.6 metres. The entrance at the north-east, roughly a metre wide, was likely reached by a causeway across the fosse, traces of which may still be present, though the fosse itself is poorly defined in that section. An internal dividing wall, now collapsed to a low spread of rubble about 1.8 metres wide, further subdivides the northern and western section of the interior. In the south-east, the better-preserved of the two hut remains measures approximately 4.3 metres by 3.2 metres internally, with walls surviving to just under 0.8 metres. A long run of collapsed walling extending westward from near its south wall then turning north suggests a second hut or a small yard adjoining it, though only a handful of facing stones remain to hint at the outline. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, which remains the principal published record for the area.

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