Ringfort (Rath), Sheheree, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
What makes this particular enclosure quietly arresting is not the earthwork itself but what sits inside it.
Two standing stones occupy the south-eastern quadrant of a ringfort in Sheheree, Co. Kerry, an arrangement that raises more questions than the surrounding pasture is inclined to answer. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when formed primarily from earth, were typically the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, dating broadly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They served as domestic and agricultural compounds, their banks marking territory and offering a degree of protection. Finding standing stones within one is an unusual detail, since upright stones of this kind generally predate the ringfort tradition by several millennia, suggesting that whoever built or used this enclosure was doing so in deliberate or unconscious proximity to something much older.
The enclosure itself is circular, with a diameter of thirty metres, and is defined by an earthen bank measuring five and a half metres wide. The bank stands roughly sixty centimetres above the interior surface but rises to a more imposing one point eight metres on its outer face, which gives a reasonable sense of how such structures were designed to present themselves to the outside world. The southern arc is the best preserved section, and along the south-western arc the bank retains stone facing on its internal side, a detail that points to some care in construction. A break in the bank at the south-south-east may have served as the original entrance, though a later stone wall now blocks that gap. The interior slopes gently downward toward the south-east, in the direction of those two standing stones.