Ringfort (Rath), Carrigafoyle, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Carrigafoyle, Co. Kerry

On gently sloping ground near Carrigafoyle in north County Kerry, an early medieval farmstead has left its outline quietly pressed into the landscape.

It is a rath, a type of ringfort common across Ireland during the early medieval period, typically built as an enclosed homestead for a farming family of some local standing. What marks this one out is the degree to which time has worn it unevenly: on the north and north-east sides, the enclosing bank has been reduced to little more than a faint swelling in the field, while the north-west to west section still carries enough definition to be read clearly in the ground.

The site is univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than two or three concentric rings, which places it among the more modest end of the ringfort spectrum. The bank itself rises 1.6 metres above the exterior fosse on its best-preserved side, though only about a metre on the interior face, with a base width averaging 3.5 metres. The fosse, a shallow external ditch that would have reinforced the bank's defensive or boundary function, runs along the same north-west to west arc, sitting roughly 0.8 metres below the level of the surrounding land and about a metre wide. The interior slopes gently northward. These measurements, recorded as part of the North Kerry Archaeological Survey published in 1995 by C. Toal, give a precise if modest portrait of a structure that has otherwise slipped largely out of notice.

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