Ringfort (Cashel), Carrowdotia, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
In the gently rolling pasture of Carrowdotia in County Clare, a circular enclosure sits on a slight rise in the ground, its perimeter reduced over centuries to a low spread of stone, its original entrance entirely lost to view.
What survives is a cashel, the term used for a ringfort whose enclosing boundary was built from stone rather than earth and timber. These structures were the farmsteads and defended homesteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and thousands of them survive across the country in varying states of preservation. This one is quietly dissolving back into the landscape.
The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring around 24 metres across on its east-west axis and 22 metres north to south. Its defining wall, now spread to a width of between two and a half and three metres, stands at most a metre high on the exterior, and considerably less on the interior side. The most legible section is at the north, where the original outer facing of the wall, built to a height of around 0.7 metres, is still visible, offering a glimpse of how the structure would once have appeared: a proper coursed stone boundary rather than the shapeless rubble it has largely become. A later field wall, running northwest to southeast, now bisects the interior, a commonplace fate for old enclosures absorbed into post-medieval farming arrangements. No entrance can be made out anywhere along the circuit, which may reflect collapse and robbing of the stonework over time, or simply the degree to which the structure has settled into the ground.