Ringfort (Rath), Dromin, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Dromin, Co. Kerry

On a south-east-facing slope in Dromin, Co. Kerry, a circular earthen bank sits quietly in pasture, absorbed so thoroughly into the surrounding field system that the cattle who graze here have worn their own gaps through its ancient walls.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that once dotted the Irish countryside in its thousands during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Most people pass them without a second glance, mistaking the low, grassy mounds for natural features of the land.

The bank here measures just over eighteen metres across on its north-west to south-east axis, with a width of around three and a half metres and an external height of nearly two and a half metres in places, giving it considerably more presence from the outside than from within. An entrance, four metres wide, opens to the east, a typical orientation for ringforts, where the morning sun would have greeted the inhabitants. Two narrower breaks in the bank at the north-east and south-south-east are more recent intrusions, worn through by cattle. What makes this particular example quietly interesting is an engineering detail: because the enclosure sits on a slope, the south-eastern portion of the interior has been built up by about one and a half metres above the external ground level, effectively levelling the living space against the angle of the hillside. The northern arc of the bank has been folded into the existing field boundary system over the centuries, and a further field boundary radiates outward from the south-south-east arc, suggesting that later farmers found the old structure a convenient skeleton around which to organise their own land divisions.

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