Ringfort (Cashel), Gorteen, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Gorteen, Co. Clare

In the woodland around Gorteen in County Clare, a stone ring-wall sits so close to the ground that a surveyor who attempted to reach it in 2017 could not even confirm what remained.

That inaccessibility is itself part of the story: a cashel, the term used for a ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than an earthen bank, reduced over the centuries to something barely legible in the landscape.

The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp, writing between 1914 and 1916, recorded the monument as a ring-wall that was nearly levelled, suggesting it was already in poor condition over a century ago. At that point the site measured roughly 21 metres in diameter, and earlier Ordnance Survey mapping showed it sitting within rough pasture and rock outcrop. Since then, dense mixed woodland has grown up around it, and the clearings and grazing land that once made the enclosure visible have long since disappeared. Cashels of this kind were typically built during the early medieval period, serving as enclosed farmsteads for a family and their livestock, the stone construction reflecting the ready availability of limestone in Clare rather than any particular status or defensive ambition.

The woodland cover that has overtaken this site makes a casual visit impractical, and the 2017 survey was unable to gain access at all. What little can be said about its current condition is essentially what Westropp observed more than a hundred years ago: a wall, once circular, now largely gone into the ground.

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Pete F
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