Ringfort, Ballycasey, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ringforts

Ringfort, Ballycasey, Co. Galway

In the undulating grassland of Ballycasey in County Galway, a circular enclosure sits so thoroughly swallowed by vegetation and accumulated field rubble that its true outline is difficult to read at all.

What remains is a cashel, a type of ringfort built from drystone walling rather than earthen banks, and this particular example measures roughly forty metres across. The collapsed wall can still be traced running from the west, around through the north and down to the south, though generations of farmers clearing nearby fields have tipped loose stone against and over it, blurring the boundary between monument and landscape.

A gap of just over three metres on the south-east side may well be the original entrance, which would be consistent with how many early medieval cashels were oriented. Inside, the north-western quadrant holds something more elusive: a rectangular structure about seven metres long, its walls now no more than a grass-covered ridge. The landowner has identified this area as the location of a leacht, a term used in Irish tradition for a low commemorative or devotional cairn, often associated with a holy person or a place of local veneration. Whether the rectangular structure and the leacht are one and the same feature, or two separate things occupying the same corner of the enclosure, remains unclear. That ambiguity is itself telling; cashels of this kind were occupied and modified across long stretches of time, accumulating layers of use that are not always easy to untangle.

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Pete F
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