Ringfort (Rath), Heirhill, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
The Irish name for this ringfort in Heirhill, north Kerry, translates roughly as the ringfort of the mounds of stones, and the name earns its keep.
Inside the roughly circular enclosure, which measures about 29 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west, two oblong stone mounds still sit in the interior, one in the north-east and one in the south-west. These are not decorative or incidental. They are, in all likelihood, the collapsed remains of structures that once stood here, perhaps small dwellings or outbuildings associated with a farming household of the early medieval period.
A univallate rath, as this type of ringfort is known, consists of a single enclosing bank and ditch rather than the more elaborate multi-vallate arrangements found at higher-status sites. Here, the bank is around five metres wide and rises almost two metres above the external fosse, the shallow ditch that rings the outside of the enclosure. The interior sits at a higher level than the surrounding land, and there is a clear entrance gap, roughly two metres wide, in the eastern side of the bank. The antiquarian T. J. Westropp visited the site in 1909 and recorded a more complex picture than survives today: he noted a house-ring to the north and further hut-rings to the west, south, and east, clustered against the outer bank, as well as an outer ring of stone encircling the whole. None of the outer ring remains visible. The site does not appear on the 1842 Ordnance Survey map, though it is marked on the 1916 edition, suggesting either that it was overlooked in the earlier survey or that its designation shifted over time relative to a nearby ringfort to the north-west.
The stone mounds, the scattered large stones in the interior, and the well-preserved fosse, which is round-bottomed and still reaches about a metre in depth, give this rath an unusually legible quality. What looks like a quiet grassy enclosure in the Kerry landscape carries within it the faint outlines of an entire small settlement, most of it gone but just enough remaining to prompt the question of what exactly Westropp was looking at when he stood here over a century ago.