Ringfort (Cashel), Carrowbeg, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
On a hill summit in Carrowbeg, County Galway, the ground holds the memory of an enclosure that has been slowly returning to grass for centuries.
What remains of this cashel, a type of ringfort built from unmortared stone rather than earthen banks, is subtle enough that a casual walker might read the low rise and fall of the terrain as nothing more than the natural contour of the hill. But the dimensions are too deliberate for that: the enclosed area measures roughly 24 metres from north-west to south-east and just under 24 metres from north-east to south-west, giving it the near-circular form that defines these structures.
The cashel's perimeter survives in two distinct ways depending on which side you approach. From the east through south to north, a collapsed drystone wall lies under a thick cover of grass and sod, its original height long lost but its line still readable as a low ridge. From north around to east, the boundary is marked instead by a natural or partly shaped scarp in the hillside. Attached to the cashel on the eastern side is an irregularly shaped annexe, roughly 13 by 9 metres, defined by its own collapsed stone wall. Annexes of this kind are fairly common at cashel sites and are generally thought to have served agricultural purposes, perhaps as enclosures for livestock. To the west, faint traces of old field walls suggest that the wider landscape around the cashel was once more intensively managed than the open grassland visible today.