Ringfort (Rath), Derrynacaheragh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
On a south-facing slope above the valley of the Feabunaun stream in County Kerry, a stretch of earthwork sits in ordinary pasture, largely invisible to anyone walking past it.
What survives of this possible rath, an early medieval enclosed farmstead typically defined by one or more earthen banks, amounts to a single arc of a scarp, roughly sixteen metres long and just under one and a half metres high, faced with large stones and with field-clearance rubble piled against it. The rest of the enclosure has either been ploughed away or sunk beneath the soil surface entirely.
What makes this site quietly interesting is the disagreement between the maps. The Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1846 shows the enclosure as oval, measuring approximately forty metres on its north-west to south-east axis and thirty metres across. By the time the 1895 edition of the same map was produced, the feature had been recorded as circular, with a diameter of around thirty metres. Whether this reflects a genuine change in what was visible on the ground between those two surveys, or simply a difference in how individual surveyors interpreted an already degraded earthwork, is not clear. Either way, the site sits on an undulating terrace on the valley slope, in the kind of location that early farming communities in Ireland consistently favoured: sheltered, with good aspect, and near running water.