Ringfort (Rath), Nantinan, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Nantinan, Co. Kerry

What survives at Nantinan is easy to miss.

The earthwork sits in a corner of a pasture field on level ground, and what was once a substantial circular enclosure has been worn down to little more than a low grassy rise, barely half a metre above the surrounding land on its outer edge and almost imperceptible from the interior. A faint depression marking an old fosse, the ditch that once ran between the inner and outer banks, can still be traced on the west-northwest side, along with the ghost of a second, outer bank. Raths of this kind were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically earthen rings thrown up around a farmstead or the residence of a local lord, offering a degree of security and social definition rather than serious military fortification.

The contrast between what stands today and what once existed is made plain by the 1846 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which records the enclosure at roughly 35 metres in diameter, nearly double the approximately 18 metres that can be measured now. That same mapping also shows a limekiln sitting on the bank at the northwest, a structure used for burning limestone to produce agricultural lime, which points to the rath having been put to practical post-medieval use long after its original purpose had been forgotten. By the 1840s, local placename recorders had identified it as 'middle Nantenane fort', a name preserved in the Ordnance Survey Name Books for the Killorglin district, suggesting there were at least two other features in the immediate area significant enough to be named in relation to it. The survival of that name is itself a minor curiosity, fixing a sense of local order and geography onto what must already have been a degraded monument.

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