Ringfort (Cashel), Dangan, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Dangan, Co. Clare

Two ancient enclosures sitting within roughly forty metres of each other in the same stretch of Co. Clare woodland is not what you would call a coincidence.

This ringfort, a roughly circular enclosure about thirty-three to thirty-five metres across, occupies a ridge just off its crown in mixed woodland at Dangan, and its nearest neighbour to the south-west is a cashel, the term used for a stone-walled enclosure of broadly similar type and period. The two monuments share the same elevated ground, which commands good views down to lower-lying land to the north and north-west, and their proximity suggests they may have formed part of the same settlement or landholding at some point in the early medieval period.

The enclosure itself is defined by a collapsed stone wall, moss-covered and weathered, that still reads clearly in the landscape despite centuries of neglect. At its north and north-east arc the wall is best preserved, reaching an exterior height of around 1.2 metres, while the north-north-east section is considerably more degraded. The overall width of the wall, at nearly seven metres, speaks to an original structure of some substance. A gap on the western side, just over a metre wide at its base, marks what appears to be the original entrance. Along the south-east exterior, a shallow linear channel runs roughly east-north-east to west-south-west, skirting the monument's outer edge. A trackway to the south-west of the enclosure curves in a way that seems deliberately to respect the monument's boundaries, which hints at a long continuity of use, or at least of awareness, in the landscape around it.

The interior slopes gently eastward and is now colonised by trees and briars, which makes a close inspection of the ground surface difficult. The monument was recorded as an 'Enclosure' rather than a ringfort in earlier surveys, a classification that reflects some uncertainty about function rather than any doubt about its antiquity. Its position overlooking the companion cashel to the south-west gives the site an added layer of interest for anyone willing to push through the woodland to find both structures in the same visit.

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