Ringfort (Rath), Crotta, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Crotta, Co. Kerry

Inside the grounds of Crotta Demesne in County Kerry, a roughly circular earthen enclosure sits quietly on level ground, its interior cleared and put to use as a kitchen garden.

That combination, an early medieval ringfort repurposed for growing vegetables, is not unheard of in Ireland, but it gives this particular site an odd double life: a domestic farming structure from perhaps the first millennium still holding its shape well enough to make a practical walled plot for whoever later tended the demesne.

A ringfort, also called a rath, is one of the most common monument types in Ireland, typically a circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, thought to have served as a farmstead or defended homestead during the early medieval period. This example measures roughly 39 metres north to south and 36 metres east to west, defined by an earthen bank that rises about 1.7 metres on its exterior face and a fosse, or encircling ditch, around two metres wide. The bank survives with two distinct gaps, one to the north-north-east and one to the north-east, each approximately 4.5 metres across, which likely represent original or later entrances into the enclosure. Several large dead trees stand on the bank itself, but the interior is otherwise largely clear. Pressed against the inner face of the bank on the eastern side is a smaller, roughly circular earthen feature about 4.4 metres in diameter, its purpose not recorded, though such features within ringfort interiors have sometimes been associated with souterrains, storage pits, or subsidiary structures.

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