Ringfort (Cashel), Caherbullog, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Caherbullog, Co. Clare

Most cashels, the dry-stone walled enclosures that served as farmsteads and defended settlements across early medieval Ireland, are roughly circular.

The one on the north-eastern slopes of Slieve Elva in County Clare is not. It is rectangular, roughly 28 metres on its longer axis and 24 metres on the shorter, a shape unusual enough to make it stand out even in a landscape already dense with ancient field boundaries.

The site sits within a large, surviving field system on the slopes of Slieve Elva, the upland ridge that runs through the Burren's northern fringe. The cashel's stone wall, though not dramatically visible at ground level, can be traced clearly on aerial ortho photography, where it reads as a distinct rectangular outline against the surrounding field network. The pairing of an atypically shaped enclosure with an intact ancient field system suggests a working agricultural landscape that has retained something of its early medieval organisation, even as the precise date and function of the cashel itself remain unrecorded.

Slieve Elva's slopes are open and exposed, and the field systems here can be subtle underfoot, easier to read from above than from within. The cashel sits in an area where the boundaries of one enclosure blur into the next, and patience, and perhaps a map, help considerably in picking out the rectangular form from the general texture of the hillside.

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