Ringfort (Cashel), Cahernaman, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Cahernaman, Co. Kerry

In the gently sloping pasture outside Cahernaman, with the Valentia river estuary visible in the distance to the south-west, there is almost nothing left to see.

A slight raised platform, roughly 22 metres across, is all that survives of a caher that was levelled in the early 1980s. A caher is a stone ringfort, a type of circular enclosure built from dry-stone walling that served as a farmstead and place of shelter during the early medieval period in Ireland. This one was still substantial enough to be mapped on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey, which recorded not just the outer enclosure but an internal structure as well. Within a few decades of the twentieth century's end, both were gone.

The last detailed account of the site while it still stood was written by Ua Riain in 1927. He described the enclosing rampart as constructed of rough, large, unmortared stones, forming a circular space 92 feet, or about 28 metres, in diameter. Inside that outer ring he noted a smaller concentric ring, most likely the remains of a hut-site, measuring 49 feet, or just under 15 metres, across. A short distance away, roughly 15 yards to the side of the caher, there was a mound containing the entrance to a souterrain, an underground stone-built passage or chamber that typically served for storage or concealment in early medieval settlements. These three elements together, the enclosing wall, the internal dwelling, and the associated souterrain, suggest a reasonably well-appointed farmstead of its era, now reduced to a faint rise in the ground that most walkers would pass without a second glance.

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Pete F
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