What is recorded here

Kells, a townland in Clare, holds a two-throated ring of earth and ditch that has watched the same shallow valley since before maps existed. Cattle still walk the ridge above it, unaware they graze the edge of a fort old enough to make centuries sound young. The outer bank wears a later stone wall like a scarf, but the inner ditch and double rampart remain the original shape: a circle drawn in soil, not ownership. What the circle excluded, what it protected, and whose hands first turned its entrance east have all drifted into the grass.

In pasture on the S-facing slope of an ENE-WSW ridge, overlooking a shallow valley to E. Hachured on both the first (1842) and Cassini (1916) editions of the OS 6-inch maps. Classified as an enclosure in the RMP (1996). A circular bivallate rath (diams. 42.9m N-S; 40.7m E-W) is defined by an inner earthen bank, a fosse and a second, outer earthen bank. The inner bank (Wth 4-5m; int. H 0.4m; ext. H 1m) has been reduced to a scarp (max. H 1.5m) from E-SE-SW. The fosse is round-bottomed (Wth at top 6.6-7.4m; D 0.6m) and can be traced from E-S-NW. The outer bank (Wth c. 2.5m; ext. H 0.2m) is extant from E-SE-SW. There is an entrance (Wth 2.4m) at E. The banks are covered in scrub and the outer bank is overlain by a later drystone wall from SW-W-WNW. Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy and Eve Campbell Date of upload: 20-10-202

A fairy fort or earthen ringfort in Kells is a circular earthen enclosure, likely dating to the early medieval period, used as a defensive or domestic site. Local tradition associates such forts with fairy lore, and they were often avoided due to beliefs in supernatural inhabitants.

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