Ringfort (Cashel), Ballymahony, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
On a gently south-facing slope of plateau limestone in County Clare, a roughly D-shaped stone enclosure sits within a large field system, its straight northern wall setting it apart from the more familiar circular profile most people associate with early medieval ringforts.
This is a cashel, meaning a ringfort built in drystone rather than earthen banks, and the distinction matters here: where an earthen fort would have softened and slumped into the landscape over centuries, this one has left a wall whose outer face remains legible all the way around, even after a later field boundary was laid directly on top of it.
The structure measures approximately 30 metres east to west and 27 metres north to south, and its drystone wall varies between 2 and 3 metres wide for most of its circuit, widening considerably to 5 or 6 metres along the northern stretch. That northern section also preserves the wall to its greatest height, reaching up to 0.8 metres in places, though the spread of tumbled stone means the full original thickness is difficult to read at a glance. The cashel appears on both the 1842 and 1920 editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, marked with hachures that indicate an upstanding earthwork, suggesting it has been a recognised feature of this karst limestone landscape for well over a century and a half. Inside the northern sector, three roughly rectangular depressions have been cut into the ground, each around 5 to 6 metres in one direction and 4 metres in the other, and a clearance cairn, a pile of stones gathered from the surrounding ground during agricultural tidying, sits just north-east of the centre. These depressions are not explained by the surviving record, and their purpose remains an open question, which is part of what makes the interior worth looking at slowly rather than just in passing.