Ringfort (Cashel), Ardagh, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Ardagh, Co. Kerry

On low-lying pastureland in north Kerry, a large earthen bank curves quietly through a field, mostly swallowed by vegetation and easy to miss unless you already know what you are looking for.

This is a cashel, a type of ringfort defined by a stone-built rather than purely earthen enclosure, and the stonework here, though largely overgrown and only visible in places, still forms a bank that rises to 3.2 metres above the surrounding ground level. That is a considerable wall by any reckoning, the sort of barrier that would have made a serious statement about who lived inside and what they were worth protecting.

The site is classified as a univallate cahir, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the multiple concentric rings found at more elaborate examples. The sub-circular interior measures roughly 30 metres north to south and just over 31 metres east to west, a generous area suggesting a settlement of some substance. Two openings break the enclosing bank: one to the north-west, measuring 2.4 metres wide, and a larger one to the south-east at 5 metres. That south-eastern gap is the more likely candidate for the original entrance, partly because of its width and partly because it appears to retain stone lining, a detail consistent with a deliberately constructed threshold rather than a later breach. The site lies one field to the west-north-west of another ringfort known as Lismoyle, a proximity that hints at a landscape once organised around a cluster of enclosed farmsteads, each holding its own ground across what is now quiet grazing land.

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Pete F
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