Ringfort (Cashel), Ballynahown, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
At the western foot of a steep rocky crag near Ballynahown in County Clare, a D-shaped stone enclosure sits in a landscape that has clearly been working farmland for a very long time.
The site is a cashel, a type of ringfort defined by a dry-stone wall rather than an earthen bank, and this one has been so thoroughly absorbed into the surrounding field system that later agricultural boundaries actually run straight through its interior and butt up against its walls. A curving field wall some 23 metres long bisects the enclosure from west to east, and adjoining field walls press in at the north-west and north-east corners. The fort has not been so much abandoned as quietly cannibalised.
The antiquarian T. J. Westropp, writing in 1905, noted the crag above as a bold mass of rock capped with a much-levelled fort, which is a reasonable description of what survives. The cashel measures roughly 27 metres north to south and 23 metres east to west internally, with a perimeter wall that was originally two to three metres thick. That wall now stands only 0.4 to 0.6 metres high for much of its circuit, though it reaches 1.3 metres at the south and south-west, where preservation is best. The northern and eastern stretches are notably straight rather than curved, giving the enclosure its flattened D-shape. Within the interior, possible hut sites of uncertain date survive in the north-west corner and along the southern perimeter, and what may be animal pens occupy the north-east corner, spilling beyond the cashel wall to the east. Whether these features belong to the original occupation or represent later reuse is unknown. The site appeared on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1915, and was formally recorded as an enclosure in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996, though its origins almost certainly reach back to early medieval Ireland, when cashels of this kind served as enclosed farmsteads for local families and their livestock.