Ringfort (Rath), Flemingstown, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
On the steep northern slopes of Flemingstown mountain in County Kerry, a roughly D-shaped ringfort sits quietly occupied, not by the ghosts of early medieval farmers, but by a series of cultivation ridges that run in neat north-south lines across its interior.
That detail alone makes the site worth pausing over. A rath, the most common type of early medieval enclosed farmstead in Ireland, was typically built as a defended homestead, its earthen bank designed to keep livestock in and trouble out. Finding one whose interior has since been turned over to ridge-and-furrow cultivation is a reminder that these monuments were not always treated as sacred remnants; they were land, and land was used.
The enclosure is univallate, meaning it has a single surrounding bank rather than the multiple concentric rings found at more elaborate sites. That bank reaches a maximum height of two metres and encloses an interior measuring roughly twenty metres north to south and eighteen metres east to west. The original entrance faced ENE and was probably around 1.4 metres wide. One of its more arresting features is the large upright slab that once marked the southern side of this entrance. It has partly collapsed, and because the bank itself has eroded and been disturbed over time, visitors can now pass on either side of the stone, which would stand 1.28 metres high if fully erect. Just inside the entrance, a short stretch of paved pathway survives, a rare and quietly evocative detail suggesting the care that once went into the construction. A field fence runs along the western side and may have altered the bank somewhat in that area, and a gap at the southwest is considered a later, secondary opening rather than an original feature. The survey on which this description draws is J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, Corca Dhuibhne.