Ringfort (Rath), Imileá Na Gcrann, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
On the low-lying ground south of Smerwick Harbour on the Dingle Peninsula, there is a ringfort whose most intriguing details are not its earthen banks but what lies hidden within them.
A univallate rath, meaning a ringfort enclosed by a single bank and ditch, this is a reasonably well-preserved example of a monument type once scattered across Ireland in the tens of thousands, typically serving as a defended farmstead in the early medieval period. What sets this one apart is the quiet strangeness of its interior, where two parallel linear depressions run almost the full length of the western half of the enclosure in a north-west to south-east direction, converging near a low mound of stones and earth roughly seven metres across. Nobody is entirely certain what these features represent.
The earthen bank survives to a height of around 2.15 metres above the interior floor and 3.75 metres above the external fosse, the ditch that runs around the outside of the enclosure. The entrance gap, facing north and roughly 1.7 to 2 metres wide, retains a large stone set into its eastern side that spans the full width of the bank just above the threshold, a detail that speaks to the care once taken in constructing even the utilitarian parts of these sites. An 11-metre section of the bank at the south-east has been removed and replaced with a modern stone wall and wire fence, and parts of the fosse fade to almost nothing near the entrance. The clue to the interior features may lie in a note published by O'Sullivan in 1931, referencing the discovery sometime between 1850 and 1860 of a passage connecting two nearby forts on land then belonging to a Mr John MacDonnell. It is possible that the depressions and the internal mound here are the surface traces of a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage of the kind frequently found associated with early Irish ringforts, perhaps the same underground network recorded by O'Sullivan, or a related one. The question remains open.