Ringfort (Cashel), Durra, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
In the townland of Durra, in County Clare, there sits a cashel, a type of ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than earthen banks.
Where the more common earthen ringforts were thrown up from ditched soil, cashels relied on the ready availability of local stone, and in the limestone-rich landscapes of Clare they are a familiar, if often overlooked, presence. This one carries the designation simply by its type and location, which is in some ways fitting: cashels were working enclosures, probably farmsteads, built during the early medieval period to protect livestock and household from the ordinary hazards of rural life rather than from any grand military threat.
Beyond its classification as a cashel within the ringfort family of monuments, the specific history of this structure in Durra remains largely undocumented in publicly available form. What can be said in general terms is that cashels of this kind date broadly to the period between the sixth and twelfth centuries, when the ringfort in its various forms was the dominant settlement type across Ireland. Thousands survive in varying states of preservation, many still embedded in field boundaries or half-absorbed into later agricultural landscapes, their original purpose long since forgotten by the families farming around them.