Building, Lislarheenmore, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Utility Structures
Beneath the grass at Lislarheenmore, Co. Clare, a small ruined building sits quietly at the centre of a cashel, its stones long since collapsed and mostly swallowed by turf.
What makes the spot quietly compelling is not the structure itself, which survives only as a rough outline of grassed-over rubble measuring approximately six metres east to west and five metres north to south, with occasional facing stones still visible along the northern and eastern sides. It is the relationship between this building and what lies beside it that gives the site its particular character.
The building occupies the centre of a cashel, a type of early medieval stone-walled enclosure typically associated with a farmstead or settlement, though the cashel here is itself poorly preserved. Close by is a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber used in early medieval Ireland for storage or refuge, sometimes both. The positioning of the building relative to the souterrain is suggestive; it may originally have concealed the entrance to that underground feature. Whether this was deliberate, a way of keeping the souterrain's mouth hidden from view or protected from the elements, or simply a matter of practical proximity, is not certain. But the arrangement hints at a site where the visible and the subterranean were once carefully related to one another, even if time has softened both almost beyond recognition.