What is recorded here

None of these is a lost place. They are ordinary in the sense that they still exist and can be seen. What is unusual is the moment when human life first entered them: the first chamber recorded, the first room mapped, the first address written down. The gods may have built the structures, but human beings completed them by witnessing them and transmitting the memory. That is why they are not dead. The dead are not in them; they are the ones who make the distinction.

Internal diam. 23.7m N-S, 22.3m E-W This bivallate rath is one of a group of four situated on the E slopes of Bentee mountain. It is the most southerly of the group and lies 150m SSW of the previous site. The outer bank is well-preserved except at NW, where it is no longer extant, and at S, where it has been replaced with a stone-built field boundary which maintains its curvature. At NE it has a maximum external height of 1.5m, a width of 2.5m and falls on average 1m to the base of the 3.5m wide, flat-bottomed fosse. The steep-sided inner bank rises 2.3m above the fosse and measures up to 4m in basal width. Its inner face is revetted with drystone masonry, and some stones visible in its outer face at NE and S suggest a similar feature there. A 2.6m wide entrance gap is located at E, where a 3m wide causeway crosses the fosse. Directly inside the entrance at S is an L-shaped wall, .8m wide and up to .6m high, which abuts the inner face of the bank. It forms a building which is open to N and measures 2.1m x 1m internally. The remains of a large rectangular building (KE079-054001-) occupy much of the N half of the rath's interior. The structure measures 16.6m N-S x 7m E-W internally and its 1.5m thick walls survive to a maximum height of 1.25m. Three gaps occur in its S side-wall, the central one of which, 1.7m wide, may be the original entrance. Donaldson recorded the blocked opening to a Man-made underground passage (KE079-054002-) just N of the rectangular house site (1956). The above description is derived from A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan (compilers), 'The Iveragh peninsula: an archaeological survey of South Kerry'. Cork University Press (1996), no. 481. In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 30 July 2013

A bivallate earthen ringfort in Carhan Upper, likely dating to the early medieval period, situated among a group of four similar forts on the eastern slopes of Bentee mountain. Local tradition associates such sites with fairy lore, reflecting their enigmatic and otherworldly reputation in Irish folklore.

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