Ringfort (Rath), Glanlough, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
On the eastern flank of a mountain ridge in Kerry, where the valley of Glanlough drops away toward Glanteenassig, a circular earthwork sits on a slope that tilts gently downhill to the east-south-east.
What makes this particular rath, a type of enclosed settlement widespread in early medieval Ireland, quietly puzzling is not its size or its setting but its ambiguity. The enclosure has four separate breaks in its surrounding bank, and it is not certain which of those gaps was ever the original entrance. The interior is terraced, divided by a low internal scarp that separates a higher north-western sector from a lower southern one, and it remains unclear whether that division was deliberately constructed or simply reflects the natural lie of the ground beneath.
The rath was recorded in detail by J. Cuppage as part of the Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey published in 1986. At the time of survey, the enclosure measured roughly 23.5 metres in internal diameter, which places it at the smaller end of the rath spectrum. The western half of the earthen bank had suffered considerable damage, standing only about 15 centimetres above the ground on its outer face. The eastern section fared better, surviving to a height of 2.1 metres externally and about 4 metres wide at its base, giving some impression of how substantial the original circuit might have been. Pressed against the inner face of the bank at the west-north-west are traces of two conjoined hut-sites, built so as to lean into the enclosure wall rather than stand free within it. The better-preserved of the two survives as a slight depression, roughly 2 by 3 metres, edged by a low earthen bank. The second is too worn to measure with any confidence.
The ridge between Glanlough and Glanteenassig is remote terrain, and the site sits within a landscape that has not encouraged preservation. The asymmetry between the surviving eastern bank and the almost-vanished western section gives the enclosure an unfinished appearance in the field, though the survival of even faint hut traces within it means there is more to read here than the eroded outline first suggests.