Ringfort (Rath), Fehanagh, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Fehanagh, Co. Kerry

On the lower northern slopes of Knockowen in south-west Kerry, a children's burial ground sits inside what was once a much older enclosure, its boundary wall pressing up against the remnants of an earthen bank that predates it by centuries.

The coincidence is not accidental. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were enclosed farmsteads typically built between the early medieval period and around the twelfth century, and their circular banks, once thought to carry supernatural associations, made them attractive sites for later generations seeking ground that felt set apart. The burial ground here, used for unbaptised infants who could not be interred in consecrated churchyards, has effectively grown into the skeleton of the older monument.

What survives of the rath is modest but legible. An arc of low earthen bank, roughly sixteen metres long, runs in a curve from south-west to north-east, standing only about twenty centimetres high and three metres wide. The north-east and south-west tips of this bank meet the external corners of the children's burial ground wall, suggesting that the enclosure of the burial ground was deliberately aligned to incorporate or follow the earlier earthwork. Where the bank might once have continued to complete the circuit, a farm road now runs, cutting through whatever remained on the north-east to south-west line. The rath sits on elevated pasture, giving it a slight prominence on the hillside despite the unassuming scale of what remains.

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Pete F
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