Ringfort, Cragnagower, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort, Cragnagower, Co. Clare

In the townland of Cragnagower in County Clare, a circular earthwork roughly 35 metres across sits on a gentle east-facing slope, slowly losing ground to modern land use.

It is the kind of site that registers most clearly from above: satellite imagery captured around 2010 shows a bank tracing a near-complete circle in the pasture, with what appears to be an original entrance gap at the south-east. By 2020, that picture had changed; a more recent aerial image shows the eastern sector of the enclosure has been removed entirely.

The site is a possible ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish landscape. Ringforts, known variously as raths or lios, were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, defined by one or more circular earthen banks and ditches. This example at Cragnagower leaves a quiet trace in the historical record as well as the ground: the 1921 Ordnance Survey six-inch map marks the outline as a subcircular field boundary, suggesting the earthwork had already been absorbed into the agricultural landscape by that point, its arc of raised ground repurposed rather than demolished. The site was brought to the attention of the National Monuments Service by a local observer, David Galvin. An area of unreclaimed scrub immediately to the north may yet contain associated features, though that ground remains uninvestigated.

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Pete F
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