Ringfort (Rath), Tubrid More, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Tubrid More, Co. Kerry

What survives at Tubrid More is, in a strict sense, only half a ringfort.

A later fieldbank, running north to south, cut directly through the eastern side of this early medieval enclosure, leaving a neat semi-circle of earthwork where a complete ring once stood. It is the kind of collision between different eras of land use that happens quietly across the Irish countryside, one generation's boundaries overwriting another's without ceremony.

The site is a univallate rath, meaning it was defended by a single enclosing bank rather than the double or triple rings found at more elaborate examples. Ringforts of this type were typically the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, home to a family and their livestock, and thousands of them survive in various states across the country. At Tubrid More, the original internal diameter ran to around 30 metres north to south, a fairly typical size. The surviving bank remains well defined, standing roughly 1.2 metres above the interior ground level and about 2 metres above the exterior. Beyond the bank lay a fosse, a defensive ditch, and while the eastern portion of this has been lost along with the rest of that side of the monument, the fosse can still be traced from the north-west around through west to the south-west, where it measures approximately 4 metres wide and 0.7 metres deep. One small detail worth noting is that the interior of the enclosure sits at a slightly higher level than the surrounding land, a feature common to many raths and likely a result of centuries of accumulated occupation material beneath the surface.

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