Ringfort (Cashel), Cahergal, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Cahergal, Co. Galway

A later field wall has been built almost directly on top of this early medieval enclosure, running from east through south to west and effectively burying the older structure beneath centuries of agricultural tidying.

That layering is, in itself, a small piece of history: the cashel, a type of stone-walled ringfort built without mortar, has been absorbed into the working landscape so thoroughly that it now reads as little more than a slight rise in the pasture.

The site sits on a gentle elevation in undulating farmland near Cahergal in County Galway. The cashel is roughly circular, measuring about 24.4 metres in diameter, and what remains of its perimeter is a collapsed drystone wall, the stones long since tumbled and in places reused. When C. McCaffrey recorded it in 1952, there was still a discernible entrance gap at the north, about 2.4 metres wide, and four internal enclosures were visible, each averaging roughly 8 by 6 metres and defined by low earth and stone banks that once abutted the inner face of the cashel wall. These small subdivisions, positioned at the northeast, southeast, and two on the western side, would have been typical features of a settled farmstead, providing separate spaces for people, animals, and storage. The two western enclosures have since been identified as the remains of a house structure, but the other three have left no visible surface traces at all.

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