Ringfort (Cashel), Tulaigh Fhialáin, Co. Kerry

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Ringfort (Cashel), Tulaigh Fhialáin, Co. Kerry

On the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a small ringfort is quietly growing vegetables.

Known locally as An Cháthairín, meaning roughly "the little stone fort", this enclosure sits 120 metres south-west of Maulcore Lough and just north of the Inny river, its ancient boundary wall now enclosing rows of cultivation rather than the livestock or household it once protected. The diminutive nickname is apt; a caher is a stone-built ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead common across early medieval Ireland, and this one measures roughly 21 metres north to south and 19 metres east to west. Its single entrance, just one metre wide, faces south.

The enclosing bank of earth and stone still stands 1.1 metres high and 3.4 metres across, which is a reasonable survival for a site that has clearly been worked over for generations. Stone huts once occupied the interior, but local knowledge records that these were dismantled, their stones repurposed for facing field ditches nearby. The site has been described as defaced, which in archaeological terms simply means substantially altered or partly destroyed. What survives underground may be more complete, however. A souterrain, an underground stone-built passage used in early medieval Ireland typically for storage or refuge, was reportedly uncovered in the north-western quadrant of the enclosure, roughly 6.5 metres from the western bank. It opened into a small chamber, from which a passage extended to the north-east. The full extent of that underground structure remains uncertain.

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Pete F
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