Ringfort (Rath), Gleann Seanchoirp, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Gleann Seanchoirp, Co. Kerry

On a low knoll in the Owenmore valley on the Dingle Peninsula, a ringfort occupies a position that was clearly chosen with some care.

It looks out across the valley in almost every direction, towards Brandon Bay to the north-east, with the Owenmore river passing roughly fifty metres to the south before joining the Cloghane river on the valley floor. Only to the north is the view interrupted, where the Brandon mountain range rises above the site. The fort is what archaeologists call a bivallate rath, meaning it was originally defended by two concentric banks and ditches rather than one, a feature associated with higher-status enclosures of the early medieval period. The interior platform measures around twenty-four metres in diameter, and at its highest point stands about two and a half metres above the base of its outer ditch.

By the time the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map was produced in the nineteenth century, the site already showed signs of reuse. The map recorded a single-banked enclosure with a rectangular structure inside it, and the foundations of that building, measuring nine and a half metres by four metres, can still be traced, though they have since been absorbed into later field walls that cross the platform and meet at its south-south-western edge. The outer bank and fosse survive only along the western side, with the bank now barely perceptible above ground level. Two entrances remain visible, one to the north-east at four metres wide and one to the north-west at two point seven metres, though neither is sharply defined any longer. The fuller description of the site draws on J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region.

The most intriguing feature is a souterrain, an underground stone-built passage or chamber, set towards the south-eastern edge of the platform. Souterrains are found at many early medieval Irish settlement sites and are thought to have served for storage or concealment. This one is no longer accessible, but a narrow gap in its roof still allows a partial glimpse of the drystone-built interior below, a small opening onto something that has not been entered, or at least not recorded as entered, in a very long time.

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