Ringfort (Rath), Garranes, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Garranes, Co. Kerry

On the 1846 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, this ancient enclosure in Garranes is marked not as a fort or a ruin but as a 'Pound', the kind of functional label that suggests local memory had entirely lost track of what the structure originally was.

By the mid-nineteenth century, it had apparently been repurposed, or at least reimagined, as a place for impounding stray livestock rather than a defended farmstead dating back to early medieval Ireland. The name stuck long enough to make it onto the official map, which is its own small curiosity.

A ringfort, or rath, is an enclosed circular settlement, typically of early medieval date, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and used as a farmstead by a single family or kin group. This one sits on a south-facing terrace above the valley of the Glantrasna River, its elevated position giving it a commanding view across the landscape. The enclosure measures roughly 25 metres across, and the earthen bank that defines it is substantial, rising to an external height of around 4.55 metres and faced on the inside by a stone wall 1.7 metres high. An entrance on the eastern side, 4 metres wide, is accompanied by a downsloping ramp. Local information suggests that a fosse, the encircling ditch that would have made the bank even more imposing, along with an outer bank, survived here until relatively recent times, though both have since disappeared. Trees now grow on the outer face of the bank. Approximately 100 metres to the west, across a small tributary of the Glantrasna, a second rath occupies the opposite bank, making this a paired example of a settlement type that was once extraordinarily common across Ireland.

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