Ringfort (Rath), Callanafersy, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Callanafersy, Co. Kerry

Beneath a pasture field near Callanafersy, a low earthen ring sits quietly in the Kerry landscape, its most interesting feature now entirely out of reach.

Under the western side of the bank, a collapsed opening measuring roughly 45 centimetres by 60 centimetres marks the entrance to a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage of the kind commonly built by early medieval Irish farmers, typically used for storage or as a place of refuge. The passage runs for approximately six metres in a north-east to south-west direction, but it has long since become inaccessible, its mouth fallen in on itself.

The enclosure itself is a rath, an earthen ringfort of the sort that once numbered in the tens of thousands across Ireland, built and occupied primarily between the sixth and tenth centuries as farmsteads for extended family groups. This particular example has suffered considerably. A fifteen-metre section of the bank along the north and north-east has been completely destroyed, and the southern field wall has cut into another portion. What remains is a roughly oval area measuring about 18 metres north to south and just over 31 metres east to west, enclosed by a bank that rises to around a metre on its outer face but barely half a metre on the inside. There is no visible entrance surviving. The Macgillycuddy's Reeks are visible to the south, and the Laune River runs approximately 600 metres away in the same direction, suggesting the site was chosen with an eye on both the surrounding land and the waterway below.

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Pete F
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