Rathgall, Cartron, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ringforts

Rathgall, Cartron, Co. Galway

Sitting in a rock outcrop in the townland of Cartron, this cashel is now little more than a low scatter of collapsed stone, yet its outline is still legible if you know what you are looking for.

A cashel is a ringfort built from drystone walling rather than earthen banks, a form of enclosed settlement common across early medieval Ireland, and this one traces a subcircular plan measuring roughly 24 metres from north-northwest to south-southeast. What survives is largely a tumbled drystone wall, though traces of both an inner and outer wall-face remain visible at the south and southeast, giving a sense of how the structure was once built with two distinct skins of stone.

The site was recorded by McCaffrey in 1952, catalogued among a wider survey of monuments in the region. The incorporation of natural rock outcrop into the cashel's fabric is a detail worth pausing on; builders frequently made use of whatever the local geology offered, and in parts of Connacht, exposed limestone or other bedrock could serve as a ready-made foundation or even as a partial boundary in its own right. The poor state of preservation here is not unusual for this class of monument, where centuries of agricultural clearance, stone robbing for field walls, and simple weathering have reduced many cashels to ambiguous rings of rubble.

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Pete F
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