Ringfort (Rath), Boolacullane, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Boolacullane, Co. Kerry

One of the quietly telling details about this ringfort in Boolacullane is that, when Ordnance Survey officers passed through the area in the 1840s, locals could name two of the three raths in the townland but had simply lost the name of the third.

That nameless quality has apparently persisted. The fort sits on a steep slope facing north-north-west, tucked into pasture and gradually being reclaimed by vegetation, the kind of place that rewards patience rather than announces itself.

A ringfort, or rath, is an early medieval enclosure, typically circular, defined by an earthen bank and an outer ditch called a fosse, and used as a defended farmstead from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. This example measures just over thirty metres across and retains its defining features in reasonably legible form. The surrounding bank still stands about 1.5 metres on its outer face, dropping to 0.7 metres on the interior, and the fosse, though overgrown, remains well-defined along its eastern and western stretches. There are gaps in the bank at the north and north-west, the wider of the two measuring around two metres; a broad ledge of material just outside the north-west gap may represent slumped bank rather than any original feature. Inside, the ground slopes downward to the north-north-west, and running across it are the faint ridges of old cultivation strips, a reminder that the enclosed space continued to be worked long after any defensive purpose had passed. The two named raths recorded in the 1840s were called Lissnacrath and Lissoughter; this one, if it is indeed the third, went unnamed in that account and has remained so since.

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