Ringfort (Rath), Togherbane, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Togherbane, Co. Kerry

In the fields of Togherbane in north County Kerry, a ringfort once stood that has now vanished so completely that not even a faint earthwork marks its passing.

A rath, as these circular enclosures are commonly called, was typically a farmstead of the early medieval period, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and home to a single farming family. This one was real enough to be recorded on the Ordnance Survey map of 1842, plotted and named among the other features of the Kerry landscape. By the time the next edition was produced in 1916, it was gone from the map entirely, and today there is nothing left to see on the ground.

The 74 years between those two surveys cover a period of enormous disruption in rural Ireland, including the Famine of the 1840s, the subsequent collapse of the agricultural population, and the gradual consolidation and reorganisation of farmland that followed across the later nineteenth century. Raths were frequently levelled during this period, either to clear ground for more productive use or simply as a consequence of deep ploughing and land improvement schemes. Whatever happened in these particular four fields east of a neighbouring recorded site, the enclosure did not survive into living memory, and no trace of its banks or ditches remains visible today.

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