Ringfort (Cashel), Blean, Co. Tipperary

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Blean, Co. Tipperary

A townland boundary runs straight through the middle of this cashel, bisecting it north to south as though the ancient enclosure simply did not factor into the reckoning when local land divisions were being formalised.

A cashel is a ringfort defined by a stone rather than earthen perimeter, and this one on upland ground in Blean, County Tipperary, survives as a large circular enclosure measuring forty metres east to west. Its bank, built from earth and stone, runs to about two metres wide and half a metre high, with loosely piled rubble sitting on top in places. The western half of the interior remains effectively inaccessible, smothered under a dense spread of furze, meaning any full assessment of what lies within is impossible without clearance work first.

The site carries the layered marks of successive human decisions made across very different periods. The original enclosure was almost certainly constructed in the early medieval period, when cashels served as defended farmsteads for farming families of modest status. Rock outcrop pushes up through the interior surface, suggesting the builders worked around the natural topography rather than clearing it entirely. The drystone wall that now cuts across the site on a north-south line almost certainly postdates the ringfort by many centuries, and there is reason to think that stone robbed from the cashel's own bank was used in its construction, a common enough fate for ancient monuments once a site ceased to carry any social or ritual significance. Wall-footings of a disused field fence, visible on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map, also cross the northeastern portion of the site, adding another layer of agricultural history to the palimpsest.

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