Ringfort (Cashel), Aglish, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Aglish, Co. Clare

On a south-east-facing slope in Aglish, County Clare, a large oval enclosure sits quietly within the landscape, its boundaries made up of at least two distinct phases of stonework built one on top of the other across a span of many centuries.

This layering is part of what makes the site worth pausing over: what looks at a glance like a single field boundary is, on closer inspection, something considerably older beneath.

The structure is a cashel, a type of ringfort defined by stone walls rather than earthen banks, typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. This one is substantial, measuring approximately 53 metres north-north-west to south-south-east and 44 metres east-north-east to west-south-west, placing it firmly in the larger end of the cashel scale. Its wall survives in different forms around the perimeter. Along the north-north-east to south-east arc, a stony bank up to half a metre high carries a later drystone wall reaching 1.4 metres; on the western side, a double-faced drystone wall of similar height and about a metre wide defines the edge. To the north-west and across parts of the south, the original wall has been removed entirely, though the line of the enclosure can still be read as a low scarp in the ground. The site was recorded on the first Ordnance Survey six-inch map in 1842 and again on the Cassini edition of 1920, both using hachure marks to indicate an earthwork or raised feature, which suggests the enclosure was already a recognised presence in the landscape long before any formal archaeological interest was brought to it.

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