Ringfort (Cashel), Ballynahown, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Ballynahown, Co. Clare

A cashel is a stone-walled ringfort, the drystone equivalent of the earthen raths found across much of Ireland, and this one at Ballynahown occupies a position that makes its purpose immediately legible.

Placed on a rocky ledge above a sheer cliff to the west and south-west, with higher ground sheltering it from the north-north-east around to the south-south-west, the enclosure commands wide views out to the south-west and west. Whoever chose this spot was working with the landscape rather than simply imposing a structure on it; the cliff itself forms a natural defensive barrier along the most exposed side.

The cashel is roughly circular, measuring around 30 metres north to south and just under 27 metres east to west. Its drystone perimeter wall, between 0.6 and 0.9 metres thick, still stands to an external height of up to 2.2 metres at the southern side, where the outer stone facing remains clearly visible. The northern to north-north-east section of the wall has been removed at some point and replaced by a low scarp, which suggests later agricultural interference or deliberate robbing of stone. Inside, the rocky ground slopes gently eastward, and a small pen added at a later date sits against the interior of the south-south-west wall section, hinting at livestock use long after the cashel's original function had lapsed. Field walls abut the cashel at the south-west, north-west, and north-east, folding it into a larger field system that surrounds it, and a gabled building of modest dimensions sits outside the cashel wall to the north-north-west. The whole complex appeared on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as early as 1842, with hachuring indicating the raised enclosure, and was again recorded on the 1915 edition, suggesting it has been a recognised feature of the landscape for at least two centuries of cartographic attention.

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