Ringfort (Rath), Skahies, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Skahies, Co. Kerry

In the pasture above Skahies, a nearly imperceptible rise in the ground marks the outline of a life once lived behind earthen walls.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring about 26.9 metres east to west and 26 metres north to south, and what remains of its defining bank barely clears the surface, standing only around 15 centimetres above the interior and 10 centimetres above the exterior ground level. A faint trace of a fosse, the shallow ditch that would originally have been cut to provide material for the bank, is still just readable on the southern and northeastern sides. The interior tilts gently downward toward the south, following the natural fall of the slope.

A rath is an early medieval ringfort, typically a farmstead enclosed by one or more earthen banks, home to a single family and their animals, and dating broadly from the period between the fifth and twelfth centuries. This one sat on a south-facing slope, a sensible choice that would have caught available light and offered a degree of natural drainage. What makes it particularly interesting is the discrepancy between two nineteenth-century maps. The Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1846 recorded it as a multivallate enclosure, meaning it had multiple surrounding banks, with a diameter of around 25 metres. By the time the revised six-inch map was produced in 1897, it was described as bivallate, with two banks, and measured at a slightly larger diameter of approximately 35 metres. Whether this reflects genuine difference in survey method, selective recording, or actual change to the earthworks between those dates is difficult to say, but the inconsistency is a small reminder that these maps, invaluable as they are, were made by human hands working quickly across a vast landscape.

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