Ringfort (Rath), Tubrid Beg, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Tubrid Beg, Co. Kerry

A low circular rise in a field in Tubrid Beg, north Kerry, might easily be mistaken for a natural undulation in the landscape, but the geometry gives it away.

The interior sits noticeably higher than the surrounding ground, ringed by an earthen bank that still stands up to two metres above both the inside and the outer ditch, and roughly five metres wide at its base. That combination, a raised floor and a surrounding fosse, is the classic signature of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that served as the basic unit of rural settlement across Ireland from roughly the early medieval period onwards.

This particular example is univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the double or triple rings found at more elaborate sites, and its internal diameter runs to about 27 metres north to south and just over 28 metres east to west, placing it comfortably within the normal range for a domestic rath. The outer fosse, the shallow ditch that once helped define the boundary, survives reasonably well on the northern and eastern sides, measuring around 1.6 metres wide and close to a metre deep where it is still legible. To the south and south-west, however, it disappears entirely, cut through by a later fieldbank and a bohareen, the local word for a narrow rural lane, that run in a north-west to south-east direction just beyond the southern edge of the site. Two gaps in the bank on the north-west and north-east sides currently serve as the points of access to the interior, though whether either corresponds to the original entrance is considered doubtful. These details were recorded in C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, which catalogued the remarkable density of early monuments in this part of the county.

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Pete F
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