Pollcragh Fort, Lisheeneenaun, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ringforts

Pollcragh Fort, Lisheeneenaun, Co. Galway

In the pastureland and rock outcrop of south Galway, a pair of later field walls cuts straight through the remains of a much older enclosure, indifferent to whatever came before them.

That layering of different people's practical needs across the same ground is part of what makes Pollcragh Fort quietly interesting. The site is a cashel, a type of early medieval stone enclosure built from dry-laid stone without mortar, and it sits on a gentle north-east-facing slope, its roughly circular outline measuring about 33.5 metres east to west and 30 metres north to south.

Two concentric drystone walls once defined the enclosure, separated by a fosse, a defensive ditch cut between them. Both walls have collapsed and grassed over, and the fosse with its outer wall survives only along the south-eastern to southern arc. Inside the cashel, a rectangular house still stands at the centre, and to its west a souterrain runs underground, a souterrain being a stone-lined subterranean passage associated with early medieval settlement, used variously for storage, shelter, or concealment. In the south-eastern sector there is a stone-lined hollow that may have served as a lime kiln, a small furnace structure used to burn limestone and produce quicklime for building mortar or agricultural use. McCaffrey noted the site in 1952. The later field walls, one running roughly east to west across the interior and another cutting through the north-west quadrant, belong to a different era entirely, their builders apparently unconcerned with the archaeology beneath their feet.

The site is partially obscured by overgrowth and described as being in fair condition, which in practice means its outlines require some patience to read on the ground. The rock outcrop surrounding it adds to the texture of the landscape, and the clustering of features within the cashel, the house, the souterrain, the possible kiln, gives a sense of a place that was once genuinely inhabited and worked rather than merely defended.

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