Ringfort (Cashel), Gort An Tsléibhe, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Gort An Tsléibhe, Co. Kerry

In the rough pasture of Gort An Tsléibhe, a local place name carries what may be a memory of something much older.

The area is known as 'The Catharachs', a name that appears to echo the Irish word cathair, meaning a stone fort or fortified enclosure, and at its centre sits exactly that: a double-walled cashel, partly collapsed, partly rebuilt, quietly subsiding back into the hillside.

A cashel is a type of ringfort defined by stone walls rather than earthen banks, and this one presents an unusually layered picture of reuse across time. The inner wall, now reduced to overgrown lower courses no more than 0.3 metres high, forms a roughly circular enclosure about 20 metres across. At some later point, a second drystone rubble wall was constructed directly on top of the outer edge of this earlier structure, raising the overall enclosure to around 1.3 metres and expanding the enclosed area to roughly 24 metres east to west. The two phases of construction are clearly distinct in character: the inner wall is ancient and degraded, while the outer addition, though itself now old, is more legible. Along the eastern arc, the inner face of the original wall remains well defined, and a mound of loose stones sits in the northern quadrant of the interior. A narrow gap in the south-eastern arc of the outer wall, just 0.6 metres wide, likely marks an original entrance. Immediately to the east, a hut site abuts the cashel from the outside, suggesting the area supported a small cluster of associated activity. The whole complex is embedded within a network of relict field walls, the faint grid of an agricultural landscape that has long since been abandoned to rough grazing. An aerial photograph taken in 1973 captured the cashel with some clarity, offering a useful overhead record of its form before further degradation.

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Pete F
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