Ringfort (Rath), Gortagowan, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Gortagowan, Co. Kerry

It does not appear on any Ordnance Survey map, which means that for most practical purposes this ringfort in Gortagowan simply does not exist.

A rath, as the Irish term indicates, is a roughly circular earthen enclosure, typically dating from the early medieval period and used as a farmstead or defended homestead, and thousands of them survive across Ireland in varying states of repair. This particular example is in worse shape than most, its enclosing bank eroded to little more than a low, interrupted ridge of earth and small stones, gapped repeatedly and nowhere rising more than about half a metre above the interior ground level. A later field boundary running east to west has cut straight through the northern section of the bank, removing a substantial portion entirely.

What survives is still legible enough to read as a structure. The internal diameter runs roughly 26 metres on a northwest to southeast axis, and intermittent traces of a shallow external fosse, the shallow ditch that once reinforced the bank's defensive or enclosing function, are still detectable, measuring around 2 metres wide and a quarter of a metre below the surrounding ground. The original entrance, a point that usually offers one of the clearest clues to how a rath was used and oriented, cannot now be identified with any confidence. The interior holds a few ill-defined scatters of stone, their significance unclear, and against the southern exterior of the bank a quantity of field clearance material has been dumped over time, further obscuring what was already a faint outline. Dense vegetation covers the whole site.

The rath sits on a low rise on the western side of a small valley that runs south towards Coongar Harbour, and despite the site's own near-invisibility, the position commands open views across Kenmare Bay towards the Beara Peninsula. It is the kind of placement that appears again and again with early medieval settlement, a modest elevation sufficient to see and be seen, within reach of both water and farmland. The view the original inhabitants looked out on has changed rather less than the enclosure they built to live within.

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Pete F
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