Ringfort (Rath), Doon, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Doon, Co. Kerry

A low earthen ring in a North Kerry field might not stop many walkers in their tracks, but this rath at Doon rewards a closer look.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when built from earthen banks rather than stone, were the standard form of rural enclosure during the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1200 AD, and thousands survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation. This one measures 27 metres across internally, north to south, which places it comfortably within the typical range for a single farmstead enclosure. What makes it slightly unusual is the degree to which later agricultural activity has left its mark directly on the monument itself.

The rath is classified as univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the two or three concentric rings sometimes seen at higher-status sites. That bank is now low and spread, standing about 1.2 metres on its outer face and roughly a metre on the interior. A fosse, the external ditch that would originally have reinforced the enclosure, survives only in traces; to the north-north-east it retains some shape, measuring around 1.8 metres wide and 0.6 metres deep, but elsewhere its course is readable mainly through the damp-loving rushes that have colonised the filled-in hollow. More striking is the eastern side, where a later fieldbank has been driven straight through the rath on a north-south line, cutting across the monument without ceremony. In the south-east of the interior, a raised mound of roughly 5 by 7 metres, with stones visible around it, has been identified as a possible hut site. A secondary bank, about 1.6 metres wide and 0.6 metres high, curves around this mound from the north-west through west to south, perhaps an internal subdivision of the original enclosure. C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, provides the detailed record on which this account is based.

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