Ringfort (Rath), Drom, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
A low earthen ring sits in pastureland near Drom in north Kerry, its circular outline still legible in the landscape after more than a thousand years.
What makes it quietly worth attention is not drama but persistence: the bank that defines it survives to nearly a metre in height on its outer face, and the enclosed interior, slightly elevated above the surrounding ground, has held its form well enough that the whole circuit can still be read. Three gaps break the perimeter at the north-east, east, and south-south-east, the widest of them around three metres across, though whether these represent original entrances or later damage is not recorded.
This is a univallate rath, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the two or three concentric rings found at more elaborate sites. Raths of this kind were the ordinary farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dated to somewhere between the sixth and twelfth centuries, built to enclose a household, its animals, and its immediate stores within a raised earthen boundary. The bank here measures four metres wide at its base, with a slight exterior fosse, a shallow ditch, surviving to the north and north-west, one metre wide and about thirty centimetres deep. The interior spans roughly 29 metres in diameter and is noticeably wet and boggy, sitting a little higher than the land around it. To the west-north-west lies a ring-barrow, a circular burial mound of likely prehistoric date, so the broader area around Drom carries traces of human activity across several different periods.