Ringfort (Rath), Ballinglanna, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballinglanna, Co. Kerry

At Ballinglanna in north Kerry, a substantial earthwork survives in a state of detail that makes it worth pausing over.

The enclosing bank of this ringfort, a type of circular farmstead enclosure built predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, rises to a maximum external height of 4.2 metres and remains on average 8 metres wide. That is not a modest field boundary; it is a serious piece of construction, and the U-shaped fosse, or external ditch, that runs around most of the circuit adds further weight to the impression of a settlement built with some permanence in mind. The interior floor sits higher than the surrounding land, which gives the enclosed space an almost stage-like quality when you stand inside it.

The fort is univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the multiple concentric rings found at more elaborate sites, but what it lacks in complexity it compensates for in the quality of what remains inside. Two rectangular house-sites survive in the south-west sector. The larger measures 8.2 by 4.6 metres internally with walls around a metre thick; the smaller runs to 5 by 4 metres internally, with noticeably thicker walls of about 1.8 metres. A stone-lined entrance to the east, 6.6 metres wide, once led across a causeway roughly 4 metres wide over the fosse and out to the surrounding land. A quarry to the south-east has since destroyed a 22-metre section of the fosse, one of the more visible reminders that these sites have not always been treated gently by later land use. Most intriguing, perhaps, is a long depression near the interior, 5.6 metres wide and 12 metres in length, that travels westward into the enclosing bank. A souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage used in early medieval Ireland typically for storage or as a place of refuge, is thought to be present somewhere within the fort. Local tradition holds that this particular tunnel leads out of the ringfort entirely, a claim that has not been tested by excavation but which is the kind of detail that tends to stick around for good reason.

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