Ringfort (Cashel), Caherfadda, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Caherfadda, Co. Clare

In a field of rough pasture in County Clare, the ground rises almost imperceptibly into a broad, flattened circle, and it is only when you begin to trace the edge of the scarp that the scale of what you are looking at becomes apparent.

This is a cashel, a type of ringfort defined by a stone rather than an earthen boundary, and what survives at Caherfadda has been worn down to something that rewards careful looking rather than announcing itself plainly. The raised platform stretches roughly 33.5 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west, with the surrounding scarp reaching its greatest height of around a metre on the southern side. Much of the northern and north-western edge has lost its definition entirely, but elsewhere the bones of the original construction are still legible.

The most telling details emerge where the stonework has not yet disappeared into the soil. Along the base of the scarp between the north-north-west and north-east, large facing stones, each around a metre long and laid flat on their long axis, remain in place. A further section of facing stones, about four metres in length, is visible at the south-east. More intriguing still is a drystone structure, built without mortar in the traditional manner, that abuts the outer perimeter of the cashel on the north-east side, measuring roughly 15 metres long, 8 metres wide, and about a metre high. Its relationship to the main enclosure is not explained by anything surviving above ground, but its position suggests it was once a purposeful addition rather than a later intrusion. A hut site lies roughly 98 metres to the south-south-west, hinting at a wider pattern of settlement in this part of the Burren landscape, with Parknabinnia hill to the north-east and Leamaneh hill to the north-west framing the low-lying ground on which all of this sits. The cashel was recorded on Ordnance Survey maps as early as 1840 and again on the 1916 revision, shown by the hachured markings surveyors used to indicate earthwork features.

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Pete F
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