Field system, Caherateige, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Caherateige, Co. Galway

At Caherateige in County Galway, the land holds the outline of a working landscape that has been largely swallowed by vegetation.

A field system of drystone walls, wrapping around a cashel and a separate enclosure from south through west to northeast, once organised roughly a hectare of ground into distinct, purposeful divisions. Most of it is now obscured by overgrowth, visible only as intermittent rises and ridges in the terrain, but enough survives to suggest what was once a coherent arrangement of space around a settled site.

A cashel is a stone-walled ringfort, typically associated with early medieval farming and habitation in Ireland, and the field system at Caherateige appears to have been part of the broader complex surrounding one. At the western edge of the system, a roughly circular enclosure, measuring approximately 18 metres north to south and 16 metres east to west, is defined by a single line of drystone walling. From its southwestern side, a double-faced drystone wall, meaning one built with two parallel outer skins of stone, extends outward for around 18 metres before turning southeast and continuing for approximately 60 metres. This kind of turning wall is typical of agricultural enclosures designed to manage livestock or delineate separate plots, and its relatively substantial construction, compared with the single-skin enclosure beside it, may reflect a different function or period of use. McCaffrey, writing in 1952, recorded the site, and it remains one of the clearer examples of a field system surviving in association with a cashel complex in this part of Galway.

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