Ringfort (Rath), Ráth Ciaráin, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ráth Ciaráin, Co. Kerry

On the north-east side of St Finan's Bay in south Kerry, a double-banked ringfort sits quietly in pastureland, its local name, Ráth Ciaráin, linking it to St Ciarán, one of the early Irish church's more widely venerated figures.

The fort is also known as Keel Fort or St Kieran's Fort, and the cluster of names alone suggests a site that has accumulated meaning across several centuries, even if the earthworks themselves predate any particular saint's association.

The rath is what archaeologists call bivallate, meaning it has two concentric banks rather than one, a feature that may indicate higher status or simply a more elaborate defensive arrangement. A rath, in general terms, is a circular enclosure of raised earth, typically dating from the early medieval period and used as a farmstead. Here, the inner bank is the better preserved of the two, built from earth and stone, with intermittent sections of stone facing still visible along its north-east arc. It averages just under a metre in height above the interior and reaches up to four metres wide at its base. The outer bank and its accompanying fosse, a dry ditch, survive from south round to north-north-east, though a modern field boundary has been laid across the bank to the north-west, obscuring part of it. A two-metre gap on the east side of the enclosure may mark the original entrance. At the centre of the roughly 22-metre interior sits the sod-covered remains of a circular hut, about six metres across internally, its drystone wall still standing to half a metre in places. A gap on its eastern side corresponds neatly with the possible entrance to the outer enclosure. There is also a local tradition that a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage often used for storage or refuge, lies somewhere within the site, though nothing on the surface currently points to its location.

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