An irregular arrangement of field boundaries near Cahermaclanchy cashel, a ringfort of the type built from dry-stone walling and known in Irish as a caiseal, sits quietly at the north-eastern edge of one of the more remarkable medieval agricultural landscapes surviving in the west of Ireland.

This local field system is, in fact, only a fragment of something far larger. The wider medieval field system runs for 4.5 kilometres along the coast, reaching from Doolin Point in the south-west to Ballyryan in the north-east, and within that corridor lie some 34 cashels and 26 enclosures. That density of settlement evidence suggests sustained and organised land use over a considerable period, with individual farmsteads and their associated enclosures laid out across ground that still retains much of its original shape. The boundaries around Cahermaclanchy itself became clearly visible through aerial photography, including Digital Globe imagery from 2011 to 2013 and Ordnance Survey Ireland aerial photographs taken between 2012 and 2018, both of which reveal the irregular patterning of the field plots in a way that ground-level walking rarely allows.