Ringfort (Cashel), Cartron, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
In a field near Cartron in County Galway, a circular stone enclosure sits in a state of quiet collapse, its original form still just legible beneath centuries of agricultural reuse.
This is a cashel, a type of ringfort defined by drystone masonry rather than earthen banks and ditches, and it measures roughly 27 metres across. What makes it quietly peculiar is its position: another ringfort lies approximately 100 metres to the east, and yet another sits about 100 metres to the west, placing this cashel in an unlikely cluster of early medieval enclosures spread across a short stretch of the same landscape.
The cashel's defining wall survives, though poorly. A later field boundary has been laid directly over it, running from the south-east around through the south and south-west, effectively cannibalising the ancient structure for a more recent agricultural purpose. This kind of overwriting is common in Irish field systems, where the ready-cut stone of an older monument was simply too useful to leave alone. The gaps visible at the east-south-east are considered modern rather than original entrances. Cashels of this type generally date to the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to twelfth centuries, and served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or small kin group, the drystone construction being characteristic of the west of Ireland where stone was plentiful and the technique well established.