Ringfort (Cashel), Lackaroe, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Lackaroe, Co. Kerry

On a ridge saddle south-east of Curramore Hill in County Kerry, a collapsed ring of drystone walling sits in stony pasture, quietly surrounded by the remnants of a field system that once pressed right up against it.

What makes the arrangement quietly odd is the layering: an early medieval enclosure, ancient field boundaries abutting it on three sides, and tucked into the south-western arc of the wall, a U-shaped structure that appears to be a considerably more recent shelter or hut, its entrance facing inward as though making use of the old stonework as a ready-made windbreak.

The site is a cashel, the term used for a ringfort defined by a stone wall rather than an earthen bank and ditch. Cashels are found throughout Ireland but are especially common in the rocky landscapes of Kerry and the west, where earth was scarce and stone abundant. This example is oval in plan, measuring roughly 16 metres east to west and 13 metres north to south. The enclosing wall, now largely collapsed, was originally around three metres wide and survives to about a metre in height, with a possible original entrance on the eastern side. Immediately to the north-east, a bowl-shaped depression roughly three metres across and half a metre deep sits in the ground; its purpose is not recorded, though such features near cashels are sometimes interpreted as souterrains, collapsed pits, or simply natural hollows. The relict field system adjoining the cashel on three sides suggests that whoever farmed this ridge over the centuries worked around the enclosure rather than through it, treating it as a fixed point in the landscape even as the land use around it changed.

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Pete F
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