Ringfort (Rath), Derrygorman, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
What looks at first like a slightly raised grassy circle on the edge of farmland between the Owenascaul river and one of its tributaries turns out, on closer inspection, to be a layered puzzle of early medieval construction and slow erasure.
Near the centre of the enclosure, a ring of parched grass and scattered, turf-covered stones traces the outline of what was probably a circular hut, roughly 10.5 metres across. Beneath that same ground, a souterrain once ran, though it is no longer visible at the surface.
The rath, a type of ringfort consisting of a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank, measures about 19.5 metres north to south and 21 metres east to west internally. It sits at the south-eastern edge of a flat shelf of land, with the valley floor falling away to the south and east, giving the site open views in most directions. What makes the bank here particularly interesting is the evidence of deliberate stonework. The outer face is revetted, meaning faced and stabilised, with roughly-built drystone masonry, and there are signs that the inner face may once have been treated similarly, though little now shows above the grass. There is a gap of about 1.1 metres in the bank on the north-west side, and one course of the outer stone-facing continues partway across it, which suggests that either the gap was cut through an existing faced bank, or the facing was added later to a bank that already had an opening. The detail is small but the ambiguity it creates is genuinely unresolved. The site was described in J. Cuppage's 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, which remains a foundational reference for the archaeology of Corca Dhuibhne, and a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage typically associated with storage or refuge, was recorded at the centre of the enclosure as early as 1954 by Ashe, though nothing of it is visible today.