Ringfort (Rath), Leamnaguila, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Leamnaguila, Co. Kerry

On a south-west-facing slope in Leamnaguila, County Kerry, a barely perceptible rise in the pasture grass marks something far older than the farmland surrounding it.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a type of ringfort, a class of roughly circular enclosure built throughout Ireland during the early medieval period, broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and used as a farmstead or place of settlement. Thousands survive across the country, most so low and eroded that they register more as a feeling underfoot than as anything obviously structural.

This particular example is modest even by that standard. The enclosing bank measures roughly twenty metres across on its north-south axis and stands only about thirty centimetres above the interior ground surface, rising to sixty-five centimetres on the exterior side. It is constructed mainly of earth, with some shale that breaks through the surface at the northern arc. A fosse, meaning a defensive ditch dug around the outside of the bank, is faintly traceable along that same northern stretch, suggesting the original design followed the typical rath pattern of bank-plus-ditch, even if time and agriculture have softened both almost to invisibility. A gap in the bank between north and north-north-east likely marks the original entrance. Notably, a dump of shale was observed in the interior, its origin and purpose unrecorded but adding a small puzzle to an otherwise quietly legible site.

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Pete F
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