Ringfort, Kilcurrivard, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort, Kilcurrivard, Co. Galway

In a field in Kilcurrivard, a roughly circular arrangement of tumbled stone sits low in the grass, easy to walk past without quite registering what it is.

This is a cashel, a type of ringfort built from drystone walling rather than earthen banks, and what survives here is the collapsed outline of a wall that once enclosed a space roughly 38 metres across. The form is still legible if you know what to look for: a low, spread ridge of stone tracing the perimeter, the interior open to the sky.

Cashels of this kind were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically occupied between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, though some were built earlier and others continued in use later. They served as enclosed homesteads, the surrounding wall offering a degree of protection for people, livestock, and stored goods. Inside this one, a series of stone walls may represent internal divisions, the partial remains of smaller enclosures or structures within the main compound. Such subdivisions are not unusual; larger cashels sometimes contained separate areas for animals, grain storage, or ancillary buildings. About 120 metres to the north-east lies what is believed to be a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber often associated with nearby ringforts, probably used for storage or as a place of refuge. The two features together suggest a settlement of some modest complexity, even if very little of it now rises above the ground.

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Pete F
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