Ringfort (Cashel), Ballynakilly, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
Tucked into an old forestry plantation on the southern side of the Inny river valley, this dry-stone enclosure reveals itself slowly, its walls half-swallowed by trees and time.
What makes it quietly unusual is not its ruined state, which is common enough among Kerry's ancient sites, but the small lintelled opening set into the floor of the interior: a souterrain, the term for an underground passage or chamber, typically associated with early medieval settlement and used variously for storage, shelter, or refuge. The opening measures just 0.55 metres by 0.2 metres, barely wide enough to admit a person sideways, and the passage beyond it is now blocked, aligned north to south beneath the ground.
This is a caher, a type of ringfort defined by its stone enclosure wall rather than an earthen bank, and it sits on a natural terrace where the surrounding land slopes away to the north. The wall itself is carefully built, with horizontal courses of small, boulder-like slabs facing a rubble core, a technique that speaks to some deliberate effort even if the builders' identities are long lost. The internal diameter runs to roughly 17.8 metres north to south and 19.5 metres east to west, making it a moderately sized example of the form. The southern section of the wall has collapsed outwards most dramatically, but at the northern arc it still stands to an external height of 1.2 metres. No clear entrance gap survives in the wall as it stands, but the eastern section, where the stonework is most poorly preserved, is thought to mark the original threshold. Two pairs of upright slabs, one set flanking the inner face of the wall and another set at the outer face, are spaced 1.2 metres apart in a mirrored arrangement that suggests a structured passageway once stood there.
The site sits close to the head of the Inny valley on the Iveragh Peninsula, a landscape that holds a remarkable density of early medieval remains. The forestry plantation that surrounds it means the approach is shaded and the interior densely vegetated, with trees rooted both within the enclosure and directly on the wall itself. That growth, while atmospheric, has contributed to the wall's outward collapse and makes the site's proportions harder to read at ground level than the measured dimensions might suggest.