Ringfort (Rath), Reen, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Reen, Co. Kerry

Beneath the concrete sheds and farmyard clutter of a working Kerry holding, the bones of an early medieval ringfort are still legible, if only just.

Known as Lisnakeellough, or Lios na Coille in Irish, this bivallate rath, meaning a ringfort defined by two concentric banks and ditches rather than one, sits on low-lying ground south of the Laune river estuary. What makes it quietly arresting is precisely the collision of the ancient and the mundane: a site that has absorbed centuries of agricultural use without quite disappearing, its earthworks persisting beneath the vegetation like something that refuses to be entirely forgotten.

The rath measures roughly 27 metres in internal diameter, and its double-bank construction would once have made it a relatively substantial enclosure, the kind of site associated with a person of some local status in early medieval Ireland. Today, the outer bank and its accompanying fosse, a flat-bottomed ditch reaching 1.2 metres deep and nearly 4.6 metres wide at its base, survive only in the western sector. The inner bank is more intact, rising up to 4 metres above the fosse floor and composed of earth mixed with small stones. The interior has been heavily modified by farm use, with concrete sheds occupying the north-western quadrant. A concrete pillar and gate at the south-east may, however, follow the line of the original entrance, a detail that suggests the farmyard layout unconsciously preserved something of the old arrangement. Most intriguing is the opening on the external face of the western bank leading to a stone-built souterrain, an underground passage or chamber, a type of structure commonly associated with Irish ringforts and thought to have served for storage or refuge. This particular souterrain is currently inaccessible.

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Pete F
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