Ringfort, Aucloggeen, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
In the scrubland of Aucloggeen in north County Galway, a townland boundary line cuts straight through the middle of an ancient monument, as though the administrative logic of a later age simply declined to notice what was already there.
That the monument itself has largely vanished makes the situation stranger still: a structure that once enclosed a substantial area of ground now survives as little more than a collapsed wall fragment and a few stray foundation stones.
The site is a cashel, a type of ringfort defined by a stone enclosure wall rather than an earthen bank and ditch. Cashels are found throughout Ireland, most frequently in areas where stone was more accessible than deep soil, and they are generally associated with the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, functioning as farmsteads or enclosures for a single family and their livestock. This particular example is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 45 metres on its north-to-south axis. What remains of the drystone wall, built without mortar in the traditional manner, is concentrated at the northern end of the site. To the south, where the townland boundary of Aucloggeen crosses the monument on both its eastern and western sides, the ground offers almost nothing: an occasional foundation stone, little else. Whether the boundary line accelerated the disappearance of the southern portion, or simply marks where the scrubland reclaimed the stonework first, the notes do not say.