Ringfort (Cashel), Baslickane, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Baslickane, Co. Kerry

On elevated pasture above the Finglas river in south Kerry, there is a circular stone enclosure that does not appear on Ordnance Survey maps and has largely disappeared back into the ground.

What remains of this caher, the Irish term for a stone-walled ringfort, is mostly a low, sod-covered bank, its original facing slabs only faintly visible beneath the turf. The most coherent section survives at the north-east, where the wall still stands half a metre high on its outer face, though barely a tenth of a metre on the inner side, and measures roughly 2.3 metres across. At the south-east, two upright entrance jambs remain the most legible feature of the whole structure, standing about 1.25 metres apart, each slab over a metre in height and quite deliberately placed.

The site appears to correspond with a caher documented by an investigator named O'Connell, working under the Office of Public Works, who recorded considerably more detail than survives today. At the time of his visit, a large lintel stone was visible on the inner side of the entrance. That stone is still thought to be present, though it now lies partly buried beneath a low mound of earth and gravel. More intriguingly, O'Connell also recorded two openings to a souterrain, a type of underground passage built from drystone walling that is commonly associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, often interpreted as a place of refuge or storage. The first opening was set into the enclosing wall at the south and gave access to a passage running roughly 5.2 metres to the north-north-west before turning sharply eastward for a further 3 metres, at which point flooding halted further exploration. A second opening, located 9 metres to the north-north-west, apparently connected to a passage heading south. Neither entrance is visible today, and the internal ground surface of the enclosure is noticeably uneven, which may itself be a faint indication of what lies beneath.

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Pete F
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