Cairn, Fahee, Co. Clare

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Cairns

Cairn, Fahee, Co. Clare

On a limestone ridge in County Clare, above the 700-foot contour and just northwest of the high point at 721 feet above sea level, sits a ring-cairn that was recorded for decades under the wrong category entirely.

Until surveyors examined it closely, the monument appeared in the Record of Monuments and Places simply as a barrow, the classification resting on a map annotation made by Tom Coffey and referenced in his 1996 work. What is actually here is something more structurally elaborate: a subcircular ring-cairn with a compact central mound, a surrounding fosse (a rock-cut or earthen ditch), and a broad outer bank of loose stones, all sitting within the remains of an older field system that itself suggests this upland was once worked and managed in ways now largely invisible.

The monument measures roughly 16 metres north to south and 14 metres east to west across its full extent. At its centre is a stone cairn approximately 7 metres by 6.5 metres and standing between 1.1 and 1.3 metres high, with some surface stones showing traces of burning, a detail that hints at ritual or funerary use without, in the absence of excavation, resolving exactly what took place here. The fosse that rings the central cairn survives well on its south and east-southeast arc, where the base measures up to 0.95 metres wide, though elsewhere stone tumble from the cairn has largely filled it in. A grass-covered causeway, about 2.2 metres wide, crosses the fosse to the northeast, providing what appears to be a deliberate original entrance. The outer bank, between 3.2 and 4 metres wide, has collapsed entirely along its western side, and a later dry-stone wall was built directly on top of the bank for most of its circuit, one structure quietly cannibalising another across an unknown span of centuries.

The site sits within an open landscape of exposed limestone pavement and rough grazing, with wide views available in most directions. The relict field system surrounding the cairn is visible as low earthworks in the same area, and together the two features suggest a prehistoric presence on this ridge that extended well beyond a single monument placed for the dead.

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Pete F
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