Ringfort (Cashel), Caherfurvaus, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Caherfurvaus, Co. Galway

Beneath the grassland of Caherfurvaus, a passage disappears into the earth.

The cashel here, a type of early medieval stone ringfort enclosed by a drystone wall rather than an earthen bank, sits on a slope with a souterrain running beneath its north-western quadrant. Souterrains are underground stone-lined passages or chambers, often associated with storage or refuge, and their presence within a cashel typically signals a settlement of some consequence. The enclosure itself measures nearly 34 metres in diameter, enough space to have housed a farmstead of moderate standing, and its wall, though collapsed, still reads clearly in the landscape.

The site carries a quiet layer of unresolved detail. Writing in 1916, a Redington noted two large stone uprights standing within the interior, prominent enough to record but now gone without surface trace. Whether they were removed, robbed for building material, or simply swallowed by the ground is not known. What has accumulated instead is the ordinary debris of farming continuity: field walls built over the cashel's circuit from north around through east to south, clearance stones heaped against the western face, and a sheep pen folded into the wall at the south-east. The structure has not been abandoned so much as absorbed, its ancient boundary quietly pressed into service by each successive generation working the same ground.

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