Ringfort (Cashel), Ballymore, Co. Galway

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Ringfort (Cashel), Ballymore, Co. Galway

What survives at the north-western end of a ridge in Ballymore is less a monument than a puzzle in stone, and partly because someone took a bulldozer to it.

This circular cashel, a type of ringfort built from drystone rather than earthen banks, once measured around 34.5 metres in diameter. The south-eastern quadrant has been cleared away entirely, and the rubble pushed aside now forms a meandering field wall that wanders through the interior of the very structure it once belonged to. What remains of the original wall survives only in fragments, running from the south-west through the north to the north-east, while a low scarp in the ground traces the ghostly outline of the missing southern and eastern arc.

Despite the damage, the site still yields a few readable details. A gap of roughly seven metres on the southern side, combined with traces of a raised causeway extending about ten metres outward, points fairly convincingly to the original entrance. Causeways of this kind are a recurring feature of Irish cashels, providing a slightly elevated approach across what would often have been boggy or uneven ground. Inside, in the northern half, low foundations mark out a rectangular structure measuring 7.6 metres east to west and 4 metres north to south, surviving to a height of just 0.3 metres. This is thought to correspond with a roofed building recorded on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map, which would place its documentation in the mid-nineteenth century, and suggests the structure was still legible, if not intact, at that point. Whether it was a domestic building, a store, or something else is not clear from what remains.

The site sits in rough pastureland, which means the ground is uneven and the archaeology blends easily into the general texture of the landscape. The collapsed wall and the scarp are easier to read once you know what you are looking at; the causeway traces to the south are subtle enough to miss on a casual walk. The rectangular foundations in the northern interior are the most distinct feature still visible at ground level.

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