Ringfort (Rath), Mountcoal, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Mountcoal, Co. Kerry

In a field in Mountcoal, in north County Kerry, two ringforts sit within the same parcel of land, close enough to have been part of a single agricultural landscape.

This one lies to the south-west of its neighbour, and what makes it quietly interesting is precisely its ordinariness. It is not dramatic or monumental; it is the kind of site that most walkers would cross without pausing, mistaking its low earthen bank for a natural rise in the ground.

A rath, to use the Irish term, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically dating from somewhere between the fifth and twelfth centuries. The enclosure was not primarily defensive; it marked out a family's living and working space, kept livestock in, and carried social meaning as a statement of settled landholding. This particular example is univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the double or triple rings sometimes seen at higher-status sites. That bank survives as a low, wide earthen feature roughly six metres across, rising to between 0.6 and one metre on its outer face, and slightly less on the inner side. The enclosed area measures approximately 24 metres north to south and 22 metres east to west, making it a reasonably standard size for a single farmstead. On the north-eastern side, a gap of around 6.4 metres marks what was almost certainly the original entrance.

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Pete F
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